The Queue Read online

  THE WAY TO AMANI

  About a week after Um Mabrouk arrived with the letter, two events took place that sparked curiosity and commotion in the queue. First, the elderly woman from the South, who hadn’t sat down to rest for a moment since arriving, suddenly collapsed. Her son appeared instantly, a tan young man who carried her off before anyone could ask how he’d known she’d fainted. Some said she was overcome with fatigue and her spirit had risen to meet its Creator, while others said she had survived and was put in intensive care in the military hospital, where they could monitor how her heart and lungs were functioning. But the man in the galabeya, who had appeared in the queue quite suddenly without explanation, proclaimed this a sign that God was angry because she had wronged herself and all other citizens. Despite coming to the Gate and acknowledging what she had done, she did not repent or hide the error of her ways—instead she flaunted it, unabashedly parading it around. Even worse, instead of coming to submit an apology or ask God for forgiveness, she was bent on filing a complaint, as if she were the one who’d been wronged. Silence gathered around him, as he raised his palms to the sky and called out: “Only those who have gone astray picked pyramid candidates!”

  The second event was the appearance of Ehab, who announced straightaway that he was a journalist. He didn’t try to hide it, as reporters who’d arrived before him often had. He considered himself above reserving a place in the queue and instead began to work his way up and down past the people waiting, asking questions and recording everything in a little notebook. He’d started out as a rioter, an activist flush with enthusiasm, and the vast distances he traversed throughout the day still never seemed to tire him.

  Meanwhile, the people standing at the threshold of the Gate estimated that there were three whole kilometers between them and the end of the queue—much to the chagrin of those near the end, who insisted they weren’t nearly that far away. At the queue’s midpoint, the two sides were about to erupt into a brawl over their varying estimations of the distance when a well-known surveyor standing in the middle of the queue intervened and volunteered to settle the matter. Asking for a bit of quiet, he ran some quick calculations, using his geographical knowledge of the area, information provided to him by both parties (representatives from the beginning and the end of the queue), and a detailed description of the area’s various landmarks and general terrain. He made sure to include land now occupied by the queue’s most recent additions, those who had joined throughout the night. Finally, with pen and paper in hand, the man announced that the distance was in fact approximately two kilometers. Those who had been at each other’s throats just a moment before were satisfied and stopped shouting, and everyone returned to their places, pleased with the results.

  Yehya felt that the day had already been plenty eventful, in contrast to the endless empty days that had come before it. People in the queue had enough to debate and discuss until nightfall, and Yehya thought it unlikely that yet another big event—like the opening of the Gate—would happen as well. Besides, the Gate wouldn’t reopen without releasing some kind of announcement beforehand. He was becoming annoyed with Ehab and his questions, the outrage he could conjure out of thin air, his insistence on launching into ridiculous subjects and extracting answers to questions that were of no consequence to anyone else. His thoughts returned to Amani, and he realized he should hurry to visit her. It didn’t look like anything else was going to happen at the Gate today. Although momentum seemed to be building, things happened slowly here, and leaving for a little while wouldn’t do any harm.

  As soon as the old Southern woman was taken away, Ines—that foolish young teacher he considered a bit strange—had appeared in front of him. Everyone had something to say to her, and she tirelessly listened to their trifling concerns and endless stories, but no one had ever heard her utter anything important or useful. Yehya wasn’t at all inclined to speak to her. He didn’t want to tell her he would be leaving for a couple of hours, despite the conventions of the queue, which had developed over the passing days and were now practically set in stone. If he told the people around him a bit about himself and where he was going, he would be allowed to keep his place in the queue—even if he left for a long time—but Yehya decided to shirk tradition and take the risk. He left without a word and calmly slipped away. Nagy caught up with him, instinctively falling into step without knowing where they were headed.

  The weather was hot and humid, and as the sun climbed upward, it appeared to dissolve the sky behind it. In front of them, the street looked like it had just emerged from an invisible war: papers strewn everywhere, broken bottles scattered on the ground, boxes of garbage plucked out of the bins, piles of burning rubber tires still spouting smoke and occasionally flames. Nagy realized that it had been a while since he’d heard any news from Tarek. He asked Yehya, who waved the question away. He hadn’t seen or called Tarek since that dismal night in his office, when the doctor had shown him those documents. They left the main road and headed toward Amani’s building, Yehya instinctively taking the side streets. They passed several sleepy cafés and a few small shops lining the road, most closed for the day behind heavy metal grates, even though it was barely four o’clock in the afternoon.

  Nagy said he’d heard many shops had closed for good. So many shopkeepers spent so long in the queue that they couldn’t buy or sell anything or supervise their employees, and so they decided to get rid of their merchandise. He heard that even people who didn’t need to join the queue did the same when the Disgraceful Events began; they closed their businesses one after another, fearing the losses that loomed on the horizon. A relative of his, a man in the know, told him that sometimes other people didn’t believe that the shops were vacant and broke in. When they didn’t find what they’d come for, they took everything they could carry: computers and chairs, cheese cutters and deli-meat slicers. Even metal padlocks disappeared off doors in those parts of town.

  Yehya and Nagy wandered through the near-empty streets. No one knew when rush hour was anymore; there were no set working hours, no schedules or routines. Students left school at all sorts of times, daily rumors determined when employees headed home, and many people had chosen to abandon their work completely and camp out at the Gate, hoping they might be able to take care of their paperwork that had been delayed there. The new decrees and regulations spared no one.

  Yehya shook his head in silence. Since the Gate had materialized and insinuated itself into everything, people didn’t know where its affairs ended and their own began. The Gate had appeared rather suddenly as the First Storm died down, long before the Disgraceful Events occurred. The ruler at the time had been an unjust one, and popular resistance gathered to oppose him. The ensuing uprising wracked his reputation and jeopardized his properties and those of his cronies. It threatened to sweep away the system he and his inner circle found so agreeable and desperately wanted to preserve. One night, as tensions were building, the ruler broadcast a short speech on television, in which he spoke of “the necessity of reining in the situation.” There was no other harbinger of the Gate’s appearance: the next day, people awoke and it was simply there.

  At first no one knew what this immense and awe-inspiring structure was that simply offered its name—the Main Gate of the Northern Building—as the pretext for its existence. Yet it was not long before people realized the importance that it now played in their lives. As the ruler faded from the public eye, it was the Gate that increasingly began to regulate procedures, imposing rules and regulations necessary to set various affairs in motion. Then one day the Gate issued an official statement detailing its jurisdiction, which extended over just about everything anyone could think of. This was the last document to bear the ruler’s seal and signature. As time passed, the Gate began to introduce a few new policies, and soon it was the singular source of all regulations and decrees. Before long, it controlled absolutely everything, and made all procedures, paperwork, authorizations, and permits—even those for eating and dr
inking—subject to its control. It imposed costly fees on everything; even window-shopping was now subject to a charge, to be paid for by people out doing errands as well as those simply strolling down the sidewalk. To pay for the cost of printing all the documents it needed, the Gate deducted a portion of everyone’s salary. This way it could ensure a system of the utmost efficiency, capable of implementing its philosophy in full.

  A full range of security units soon appeared, too: the Deterrence Force existed to guard the Gate, and appeared only when something signaled danger near the building itself. The Concealment Force was tasked with protecting Zephyr Hospital and other facilities whose documents, files, and information were highly secret. Finally, the Quell Force handled direct confrontation and random skirmishes with protesters during times of unrest and chaos. It was well known that these guards were the least disciplined of all, yet also the fiercest in combat.

  Yehya was no stranger to the string of disasters that the Gate’s appearance had unleashed on the people. The company he worked for had nearly gone bankrupt after it was forced to pay new mandatory fees. Then a leaflet arrived, notifying the company that they’d been assigned with supplying equipment to the Alimentary Force. The task was prohibitively expensive and impossible to carry out without sustaining significant financial losses, and the company didn’t even work in food services to begin with. But their appeals were returned to them stamped REJECTED. They were forced to lay off a number of employees to fulfill the assignment, and though Yehya survived the first round, he didn’t expect to outlast the next. Murmurs of discontent circulated among the staff, but no one had the courage to speak up. It soon became clear that the Gate and its security units had tightened their grip throughout the region. The Gate’s influence had begun to seep into businesses and organizations, onto the streets and into people’s homes.

  Then one day, Yehya heard about people who could no longer stand what was happening. Word spread that a small group of people, who had recently joined together, were going to organize a protest. He was skeptical that an uprising would be possible under the Gate’s reign, but all the same he excused himself from work and left at the agreed-upon time, having decided to watch from afar. He had taken just a few steps in the direction of the square when he suddenly lost all sense of things—he realized he’d fallen to the ground, although he didn’t feel any pain, and then he lost consciousness. He didn’t wake up until he arrived at the hospital. Later, he learned that the Gate had closed that day in response to what became known as the Disgraceful Events. It hadn’t opened since, nor had it attended to a single citizen’s needs, yet it also hadn’t stopped issuing laws and decrees. It had to open, Yehya figured. What reason did it have to remain closed? The Disgraceful Events had ended by affirming the Gate’s hold on power and its growing omnipotence. Closing indefinitely made no sense, unless it was simply dealing out another form of punishment.

  When they arrived at Amani’s building, Nagy made his excuses and left so that Yehya could be alone with Amani. Yehya rang the bell a couple of times before Amani opened the door. Despite how deeply she had longed to see him, she looked into his eyes for just a fleeting moment before her gaze instinctively traveled downward. She scrutinized his clothes, and he quickly realized she was searching for any sign of bandages. Her face fell when she didn’t see any, and she was filled again with a sense of anxiety. Though she hadn’t believed in miracles since she was young, she kept wishing for one. She held fast to her hope that Yehya would undergo the operation: that it would succeed, he would recover, and this ridiculous nightmare they had been thrust into would end.

  No matter what happened, Amani never changed. Yehya knew she was guided by her emotions and never considered things rationally. He knew she waited for her dreams to magically come true and never took obstacles into account, even if she was aware of them and how difficult they would be to overcome. He dealt with her optimism by trying to make reality match it as best he could, but this time was different. She’d been drawn into the incident herself. He pulled her close to him, putting an end to her inspection and wishful thinking. He kissed the top of her head and then her lips, but he couldn’t hold her as he wanted to—the pain shot through his left side mercilessly, and he sat down, telling himself that there had to be better days ahead. She sat with him for a few minutes in the living room, then went to the kitchen and returned carrying two teacups and the cake she’d baked to celebrate his thirty-ninth birthday. He reflected with wry humor on the fact that it was the first birthday he’d celebrated with a bullet lodged in his guts.

  She didn’t have any candles in the apartment, and neither of them felt like acting out the usual celebrations anyway—it was enough just to be together. She poured them tea and cut the cake into generous helpings, wishing all the while that the bullet would simply disappear. She kissed him on the forehead and handed him his plate, but he couldn’t eat with her; the stabbing pain had spread into his whole stomach and down his thighs. He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes, and she brought him a glass of water and sat in a chair next to him, not daring to touch him. She was distraught. It tormented her to see him sprawled out like this, weak and defeated, and she felt so stupid and powerless. She knew that a glass of water wouldn’t do anything to help. Yehya fell asleep and Amani wandered through her memories, pausing in front of the Northern Building where Yehya stood impatiently every day, waiting to enter. She’d seen the Northern Building often, but only ever from a distance: a strange crimson octagonal structure, slightly higher than the concrete walls that extended from it on either side. The main entrance to the building was the Gate itself, built into one of its eight sides. It had no visible windows or balconies, only barren walls of cast iron. If it weren’t for the people who’d once entered it and told of all the rooms and offices inside, anyone gazing up at it would have imagined it to be a massive block, solid and impenetrable.

  Yehya didn’t sleep long. He was concerned when Amani fell silent and began to watch him attentively; she was counting his exhalations and synchronizing her breathing with his, so she would notice if anything changed. He gathered some strength and shifted on the sofa, and his face regained some life. It saddened him that they couldn’t find anything else to talk about, just this bewildering mess that had become their sole subject of conversation from dawn until the ominous hours of the afternoon. He woke up and fell asleep and walked and ate and drank, and deep inside his body was a bullet that refused to leave him.

  Yehya sat up, and when Amani saw this, some of the concern lifted from her face. She suggested they visit Tarek if there was still time; she was sure she could appeal to his sense of duty as a doctor and win him over, especially since things had changed since their last visit. Yehya had begun the necessary procedures: he had a place in the queue and would stay there until he received the permit. It was simply a matter of time now, nothing more, so maybe Tarek would show a little compassion and agree to help Yehya before all the paperwork was finished. There was no time for delay, or for adherence to arbitrary rules that weren’t helping anyone. Yehya nodded, took a small bite of cake, and slowly stood up, clutching his side.

  They were nearly out the door when the telephone rang, and Amani hesitated a moment before returning and picking it up. Nagy’s baritone sprang out of the receiver, and he was pleased to hear her voice—it had been a long time since he’d seen her, maybe not since Yehya had been injured. He’d just finished his errands and was returning to the queue, and offered to walk Yehya back, but Amani asked him to meet them at the hospital instead. It was a chance to meet up after not having seen each other for a while, even if the place itself held bad memories for all three of them. Yehya took the phone from her to remind Nagy to be on his guard and watch his words if he arrived before them, to say nothing to Tarek about the other people waiting in the queue or why they were there. As Amani and Yehya walked down the stairs, she reminded him about the letter she’d sent him through Um Mabrouk; Yehya hadn’t told her what he was going to do
about the suspicious doctor who’d dropped by the office where they worked. Yehya realized with surprise that he’d completely forgotten about it. Her vague letter had confused and worried him when he received it, and he’d meant to ask her to explain what had happened. It held only one real piece of information: Zephyr Hospital, the place the man worked. Nothing aside from that, no name or rank or even his job title. The doctor hadn’t asked her to do anything, not even to inform Yehya that he had come—he’d just asked Amani a brief question and then left. Although this enigmatic message was the reason Yehya had left the queue to visit Amani, it had evaporated from his memory, its place filled with pain. But again they put the discussion aside: it was getting late, and they hurried to catch Tarek.

  Nagy took the quickest route he knew to the hospital. The streets practically looked like a carnival these days; ever since the Events had ended, they were overflowing with street vendors selling all kinds of food, drinks, clothes, and an array of everyday items. He enjoyed the lively, bustling atmosphere. Most important for him, it was a gold mine of books and papers. He noticed a wooden birdcage covered in a pile of newspapers and magazines in a dimly lit corner, and a man sitting cross-legged next to it, half asleep, his head drooping onto his shoulder as if he were about to wake at any moment. Nagy scanned the headlines, searching for something in particular. Without waking the man he left money for a copy of The Truth and a magazine—in theory a quarterly but now published only as often as its editors could manage. Hunger stirred in the depths of his belly, and he paused in front of a cart where sweet potatoes were roasted and sold. But the smoke rising from it brought back memories of those recent unsettling events. He stood there, frozen for a moment, and then quickly walked on, empty-handed but for the newspaper and magazine.