Read by Stephen Butterton - podcast here (first story)
The sun feels still now, like it has stopped rising and settled into the position where it can do most damage. Its heat is relentless, melting any breeze the sea has to offer our backs. My neck is raw, and Anwar’s enlarged forehead gleams like polished metal, the shine blurring his wrinkles.
Six lanes of fast-moving traffic are raising their fanfare in front of us. Each honk produces three more in response. Yellow and black Lada taxis revving their dying breaths in third gear scold the Uber drivers racing them to San Stefano Mall in their freshly imported Emgrands. The bells of four identical white microbuses occupying various lanes (some more than one at the same time) chime in unison.
He unlocks his arm from mine and makes a signal with his hand. Two microbuses slow down before accelerating past us, each applying their own interpretation of the speed limit. I look at Anwar, who puts down his hand. That must have irked him. I’m just about to suggest flagging down a taxi instead when a third microbus – which couldn’t have been less than three hundred metres away when Anwar put his hand down – skids to a halt in front of us.
‘Medan Saad Zaghloul ala bahr,’ he confirms with the driver. We get a curt nod and a hand gesture inviting us to sit in the back, before the door slides open like magic. No fewer than nine people appear behind it, all seated within the space of a large wardrobe. To my relief, a couple of them get out, before Anwar tells me, ‘You first.’
I fold myself into one of the furthest back seats, almost taking out a woman wearing an orange veil with my elbow. Anwar scooches up next to me into a chair fit for a twelve year old. The door slams shut and the bus speeds away.
With nowhere else to put my head, I lean it against a darkened window and look up at the endless line of concrete high-rises decorating this part of the seafront. Their façades are busy with café patrons, smoking shisha either side of an upcoming shift or enjoying a retirement ritual. Anwar will be doing the same down the coast in Mansheya, once we’ve banked his pension. I did suggest meeting him there for Turkish coffee once he’d done with this errand, but he was adamant that trips to the pension office and the bank would be good for my Arabic. His Arabic lessons do tend to be about the travelling, by and large.
From nowhere, the orange-veiled woman sitting in front of us makes an impassioned cry of disbelief – so impassioned that the man in front of her wheels around in search of an explanation. He rolls his eyes as she continues to insist that something just can’t be true, before throwing her hands up and slapping them down on her knees, and rolling her head back in a sudden fit of laughter. I did consider at first that something serious might have happened in front of us on the road. Now I just assume she’s mad. Then I notice the rectangular bulge under the right side of her veil, about ear-height. This phone call with her sister will take up a good twenty minutes of our journey.
‘So, do we pay at the end?’ I whisper to Anwar in English. As if he heard me, a man sitting next to the driver at the front of the bus turns and shouts something in our direction. Anwar lifts his legs up and fumbles through a trouser pocket.
‘No, no, no, let me…’ I insist too late. Coins have already made their way to the orange-veiled woman, who in turn places them in the hand of the man in front of her, who passes them onto a teenage boy sitting behind the driver, who, after juggling them for a few seconds flicks them towards the front seats. The man sitting next to the driver gives an unhappy grunt, before we hear the jingle of money being deposited.
At Cleopatra, we’re flagged down by what looks like the entire neighbourhood. I breathe a relieved sigh when some of the crowd realise we’re not what they’re looking for. A few more disperse after a heated disagreement with our driver. We’re left with just five newcomers, who approach as the door opens and the orange-veiled woman steps out, still in mid-disbelief at her sister’s traumatic eyebrow appointment. Two of them are a young mother and her baby.
‘Come on,’ Anwar says, firmly this time. ‘We need to get out for them.’ We relinquish our haven of comfort and emerge again for a moment into the searing heat. Anwar checks that the mother and baby are going on further than us, before offering them the opulence of the back seats we have just vacated, which the mother gratefully accepts. We’re the last ones back onto the bus, and I take the last seat in the third row.
This is when I realise it wasn’t magic at all that opened the door for us. It was the person sitting in this very seat, straining within an inch of dislocating their shoulder to dislodge the door from its spot and slide it across the microbus’s rust-covered rail mechanism, every time someone needed to get into or out of the bus. For the rest of our journey, that person will be me.
Anwar is sat between me and a cheerful-looking man with a dark spot in the centre of his forehead. Thirty seconds into her journey, the baby at the back has decided microbuses are not for her, and wants everyone to know about it. The man next to Anwar continues to look cheerful. The man in front of us takes out some beads on a string, and starts to sift them from one hand to the other with his fingers.
Out of the window now I see the sea, calmed by summer, bringing moisture to a city dying of thirst. Slender beaches run up to the road in quick succession – some public and teeming with holidaying families bussed in from the Delta region; some private and high-walled, with only the mock-Californian insignia of their entranceways showing us there is any beach there at all.
‘These beaches – were they always private?’ I ask Anwar.
‘Oh, no. This was all open once.’ He frowns at the Malibu sign we’re passing. ‘The road and the sand were one and the same.’
I imagine the Alexandria of a bygone age, no concrete or cars in sight and wall-less beaches double their present-day breadth as far as the eye can see.
‘Some of these ones,’ he gestures to our right, ‘are very recent actually.’
Now I think of Egypt ten years ago, when friends could fly here with easyJet, when tourists still wanted to come here.
‘Have they been privatised since the revolution?’ I say.
He recoils at the word, and flicks a deliberate glance towards the man sitting in front of us. The man who rolled his eyes earlier at the orange-veiled woman on the phone. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, its collar chewing into his bulging neck. He seems unmoved by what I just said, uninterested or not listening. Or maybe I’m thinking this to reassure myself. Anwar appears to know something. And he would know better than I do. He has told me several stories about the café conversations of friends and comrades being played back to them later in police custody.
‘No, no,’ he replies, his tone now hushed. ‘This has nothing to do with … that.’
As we pass the Library of Alexandria, the citadel comes into focus for the first time. The creeping curve of the bay means we appear closer now to where the Pharos once stood than we will when we get off at Saad Zaghloul. This illusion never ceases to convince me I could swim across from here and touch one of the sandstone blocks that formed the famous lighthouse.
‘Do I know you from somewhere?’
Anwar turns to look at the man to his left. ‘Me?’ he says. ‘I can’t say I recall you from anywhere, sir, I’m sorry. Peace be upon you.’
The man continues to look cheerful. ‘No,’ he insists. ‘I can definitely place you. Let me think for a moment.’ He straightens his glasses whilst examining Anwar, as if to clarify his facial features.
‘Ayman?’
‘No. Sorry, sir,’ says Anwar smiling politely. ‘You must be confusing me with somebody else.’
‘Ashraf?’
‘Nope. Not me.’ Anwar is starting to enjoy this game, certain his new acquaintance has no idea who he is.
‘Anwar?’
I freeze. Pretending to look straight ahead, out of the corner of my eye I see the smile has gone from Anwar’s face.
‘That’s it, isn’t it!’ the man cries. ‘Anwar Thabit! From Mohamed Ismail Street.’
My stomach is tying itself in knots.
He continues: ‘My father used to work with you in the editor’s office. Mohamed Helmy?’
‘Oh! Oh, yes. Helmy, of course,’ says Anwar. He’s back to smiling politely now – a different kind of polite. ‘How is your father? I hope he’s well, elhamdullah.’
The knots in my stomach are starting to unwind, but not completely.
‘He’s passed, I’m sad to say.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry! May God have mercy on him.’
‘Yes, he is with God now. He lived a good life, elhamdullah.’
‘Elhamdullah.’
‘I’m Wael, by the way.’
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ says Anwar. As they shake hands, the man beams. Anwar doesn’t.
‘What are you doing now, then, Uncle Anwar?’ Wael asks.
‘Oh, now? I’ve been retired for a few years now.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Wael says, making Anwar’s longstanding retirement sound particularly obvious. Anwar closes his eyes, too tired to reprimand this younger man for his condescension. The knots in my stomach begin to tighten again, as the statue of Saad Zaghloul appears to the left of the road ahead of us.
‘Yes,’ Anwar adds. ‘Now that I mention it, we just went to pick up my pension.’ He turns to me and pats me on the thigh. ‘He’s a fine student of Arabic, this one.’
I offer a weak smile in Wael’s general direction.
Before Wael has the chance to rope me into the conversation, the microbus screeches to a dead stop, causing bells and horns to go off all around us. With all my strength I fling the door open, and hook my left arm into Anwar’s right. He hurriedly bids peace upon Wael as I drag him out of the microbus and slam the door shut.
‘What’s gotten into you?’ he asks, chuckling, as he dusts himself down. He pats his pocket to make sure his cheque is safe.
It’s not. I notice the pocket is lacking the white envelope it’d been carrying since Sidi Bishr.
Anwar looks around, panicking. The microbus is long gone. ‘That scoundrel Helmy!’ he cries.
I’m lost for what to say. All I can think of is I knew there was something off there. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Wael could, though. He got his fingers on exactly what it was.
‘Like father like son, you know!’ Anwar continues. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s enraged, banging a closed fist against his forehead and cursing over and over.
‘I’ll tell you,’ he says now in a whimper. ‘You get to this age and you think you know better …’ His voice trails off and his eyes fill with water.
At this point I’m taking my wallet out. I don’t know what else to do. I feel a thud on my shoulder.
Spinning around, I see someone with something vaguely familiar about them. A man stands before me wearing a black leather jacket, his neck bulging out of its collar.
‘Give this to your friend,’ he says in English, handing me a white envelope. ‘He dropped it on the floor.’
Anwar walks towards the man, still teary-eyed. Without a word, I hand him his envelope, and he cradles it like a new-born child.
I start to explain: ‘Anwar, he says …’
‘Keep walking close to the wall, Mr Anwar,’ the man says. Glaring at me, he adds: ‘And take care of your friends.’ With that he disappears into the crowd of people milling around Saad Zaghloul Square.
(c) Guy Howie, 2022
Guy Howie is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing and Publishing at City, University of London alongside his true passion – writing Amazon product descriptions. He has also lived in Lisbon, Portugal and Alexandria, Egypt, and previously tried his hand performing poetry at Spoken Word London.
Stephen Butterton trained at the London Centre for Theatre Studies in 2002, finishing with a run in The Accrington Pals at Jermyn Street Theatre. He then spent time in Fringe and student film productions, and of course several appearances for Liars' League, before leaving London in 2007. He now lives in Hastings, drowning in his day job as a vet. With very little time left over for acting and the written world, he is delighted to be taking to the stage once more for Liars' League!
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