The Queue (7 page)

“Don’t worry, Amani, don’t work yourself up like this. She really loved you … but it’s all in God’s hands. Death comes for us all, in the end.”

Amani stayed until the mourners dispersed and all the neighbors went home. She felt heavy in her seat and couldn’t bring herself to leave. Finally, Um Mabrouk began to climb the stairs to bed, along with her husband, who had appeared at the last minute, and she offered to let Amani spend the night if she wanted. It wasn’t until then that Amani finally managed a few words of condolence and said goodbye.

Um Mabrouk needed to use the death of her elder daughter as leverage to save the younger one, so she gathered the death certificate and all the tattered reports she’d saved since her daughter was a child and made the rounds of her acquaintances, asking for the funds she needed to get help. She wouldn’t leave until she told them of the misfortune that had befallen her and the second tragedy that lay ahead, and she asked for help from all her neighbors, even Amani’s doorman. Yet despite her efforts, she didn’t manage to collect enough money for the operation. She knocked on the hospital director’s door more than once, and when she couldn’t find him there she waited next to his official car. She bent down and kissed his hand as soon as he appeared, pleading with him to waive just half the fee, but
he shook her off with disdain and directed her to the Gate of Maladies, which presided over such cases.

The Gate of Maladies had been built a long time ago, and Um Mabrouk hadn’t been there since she was just a child, prone to illness. A doctor had warned her mother not to ignore Um Mabrouk’s chronically inflamed tonsils, so she took her to a public hospital to have them removed. The doctor there told her to go to the Gate of Maladies, a new ministry that now had jurisdiction over the hospital. There, he promised, she could sign up for free treatment. The Gate of Maladies was clean and tidy when they arrived—not many people had yet set foot inside—and she registered her name. But her turn never came. In the end, she had to go to a private doctor; he lowered his fee for her, and her mother borrowed the rest. He removed her tonsils, the matter ended, and she hadn’t been back to the Gate of Maladies since.

The Gate of Maladies was founded decades before the Gate of the Northern Building, and there wasn’t much overlap in their jurisdiction. The Gate of Maladies acted as a liaison between citizens who had complaints about their health care and the doctors and officials responsible for them; it delivered petitions and collected responses, but it never actually prosecuted anyone for wrongdoing. It took a year or two or even more for the Gate of Maladies to begin the paperwork needed to take action, and there were crumbling papers in its old chambers that had been waiting for decades to be finalized. Some, the descendants of the plaintiffs followed up on, while others were kept in trust, never to be discarded, even if no one ever asked about them again.

Um Mabrouk didn’t waste any time: she confirmed that the Gate of Maladies still stood where she remembered it to
be and then headed there, following the hospital director’s instructions. Inside an office on the ground floor, an official took a quick glance at her papers and pursed his lips. She wouldn’t receive a Treatment Permit for her second daughter unless she amended the application form, he said, and her first daughter’s death certificate as well. Um Mabrouk pleaded with him, opening her wallet to show she barely had enough to survive as it was; a few measly pounds was all the money she had in the world. She followed this with a prayer to keep his family and children from harm, making sure then to reveal the fifty-pound note she’d brought hoping it would satisfy him. But he pursed his lips again and told her that the cause of death written on her daughter’s death certificate was
inappropriate
. The girl died because her time was up, he said; she couldn’t expect doctors to alter fate. Even if medicine could perform miracles, the doctors couldn’t have extended her daughter’s life, not even by a moment. “You
do
believe in God, don’t you,
ya Hagga
?” he asked. She said nothing, and he carried on, telling her there was no need to go around blaming other people for her own woes. Finally, she asked him for his advice. His expression softened. He invited her to make herself comfortable on the broken wooden chair sitting in front of his desk, and then leaned in closer. He whispered in her ear that to obtain a Treatment Permit, she had to fill out a new application, praising the care her dearly departed daughter had received before her time was up. Then she must go to the Gate of the Northern Building and change the cause of death to something more
appropriate
. Finally, she had to withdraw the complaint she had submitted about her elder daughter’s death, and the documents she’d attached to prove that her living daughter’s condition had deteriorated. And, since she didn’t have enough
money to pay for it, she had to take her daughter off the wait list for surgery.

He gave her an application form that was already filled out, and she signed her name at the bottom of the page and gave it back to him to keep in the file. He told her not to worry about providing her fingerprints—she’d been so cooperative—and then he handed her more paperwork for the Gate. He assured her that obtaining a new death certificate would go smoothly now, and told her the Gate would provide her with a new copy that day since there would be no need to cross-check it. Pretending to be confused and in a rush, she let her fifty-pound note fall into the folder on his desk and turned to go, and didn’t hear a word from him as she walked out the door.

Yehya received an endless stream of news from his new position in the queue, which was no longer at the end, as it had been when he first got there, because dozens more people had since arrived behind him. Ehab brought news of an opinion poll conducted by the Center for Freedom and Righteousness, under the Gate’s supervision of course. They had dispatched droves of delegates to knock on people’s doors during dawn prayer time, to ask their opinion of recent events and how the country was being run. The results had finally been released, and were precisely the same as the results of the previous poll. Citizens had unanimously endorsed its governance, laws, and court rulings—wholeheartedly and dutifully supporting the just decrees that had recently been issued. Those conducting the poll had therefore decided not to conduct one again. To simplify matters, they would announce the previous poll’s results on a set yearly date.

A leaflet from the Violet Telecom Company arrived too, announcing a great promotion for all citizens: thousands of free phone lines and endless credit for an entire year. The leaflet said that the company would hold a lottery every two weeks to select ten winners, and would send them new phones, too, equipped with all the latest features and services, with no restrictions or terms and conditions. This piece of news was met with particular delight by everyone waiting in the queue and they considered it a fitting apology for the strange fact that the network had been down recently. Rumors also spread—though they could not be confirmed—that Upper Line and Normal Line microbuses would be forbidden to carry passengers for a few days, and that stations would be closed to conserve fuel.

A few people in the know speculated that this meant there was a need for more diesel fuel to clean up the square and the surrounding streets, and to remove the stains and traces left by the Disgraceful Events. Others said that some of the fuel would be dumped down the sewage drains, under a comprehensive national plan aimed at eradicating the insects that had spread throughout the country in swarms. These appeared to be breeding primarily around the queue, due to the crowding and unsanitary conditions. Most people scoffed at the last rumor, yet there had been an undeniable decline in the numbers of microbuses, which led some to believe it. Still, the microbus service had never before been completely suspended.

There was no shortage of reports on when the Gate would open, and this was the greatest source of chaos and contention. People at the end of the queue swapped stories that the Gate had already opened, while those stuck in the middle said they had a week ahead of them at most. Other stubborn rumors, whose provenance no one knew, said that the people standing
at the front had heard voices coming from behind the Gate: whole conversations, the rustling of papers, the clatter of cups and spoons. But when these rumors finally reached the people at the front, they said they’d only seen shadows, arriving and departing, but that the gate hadn’t opened and no one had ever actually appeared.

Um Mabrouk arrived at the queue with a big cloth sack containing a threadbare sheet, a small plastic mat, a round of flatbread with an egg inside, still in its shell, and the stack of papers the official at the Booth had given her without telling her what to do with them. She’d begun to set up camp when she was suddenly struck with the sense that she would be here for a long time, though how long she didn’t know. Meanwhile, Nagy hurried to meet Yehya in his new place in the queue. Nagy had just submitted an application to the Translation Office, after seeing the same job advertisement published in a small box in
The Truth
for several weeks on end. The advertisement didn’t request any specific skills; it just called for all humanities graduates to apply, regardless of their language abilities.

But a soldier stopped the Upper Line microbus that Nagy was riding toward the Gate, and forced the driver to turn around at the next street. The area was off-limits now, so Nagy got off and was forced to go the rest of the way on foot. When he arrived, Ehab told him that the road to the queue and even all the sidewalks were closed to cars in both directions, and that the Gate had issued a decree on the matter, recently broadcast in one of its frequent and confusing messages. In a low voice the others couldn’t hear, Ehab added that the decision would soon apply to pedestrians, too—you’d only be allowed to walk toward the Gate, not away from it. And as soon as the Gate began to receive people, you
would only be able to exit on the far side, which wasn’t visible from where they were standing, nor from anywhere in the queue. This way, no citizen who completed his paperwork would be able to disobey instructions, turn around with his papers, and walk in the opposite direction.

Over the weeks that followed, Um Mabrouk gradually moved up the queue by providing all sorts of key services. She cleaned people’s things, played with their children, did their grocery shopping, and sometimes even washed their clothes. She finally settled near Ines in a place to her liking and had no problems mixing with everyone else. She resumed her normal activities, but soon became more interested in the rumors and scattered bits of news she heard now and then. One day, she declared that the insect infestation people were discussing was just
“nifs”
and had nothing to do with how clean the place was. Ines asked her what she meant, and she explained that the insects were a result of the evil eye: other people outside the queue clearly had ill will toward everyone gathered in front of the Gate. People kept arriving at the queue, and the numbers continued to rise, so much so that they would soon block out the sun. But despite how crowded it was, the people in the queue lived their lives and solved their own problems without help from anyone. This was exactly what made people outside the queue fear and envy them, and what set their schemes in motion. They didn’t want the people in the queue to be a united collective or “one hand.” Um Mabrouk added that such things often happened in the alley where she lived; people everywhere needed to keep jealousy and the evil eye at bay. Ines said nothing, but Shalaby—whose arrogance had not diminished since his arrival—confidently agreed with her.

It didn’t take long for Shalaby to creep into their conversation, gradually at first, with a few well-placed comments. Then, when neither Um Mabrouk nor Ines objected, he picked up the thread of the discussion and refused to let go. He seemed to have been waiting for an opportunity to enter the tight cliques that had formed among veterans of the queue. These were difficult to penetrate, so newcomers created their own circles of camaraderie. Shalaby hadn’t been able to join a single one of those, either, though not for lack of effort.

With Um Mabrouk and Ines he found a new beginning, a way to announce his presence and loosen his tongue, which had nearly stuck to the roof of his mouth because of how long he’d gone without talking. His mother used incense to ward off the evil eye, he began, though he himself preferred to read the incantations he’d memorized as a five-year-old, when his father sat him and his cousin Mahfouz down to teach them everything they needed to know about life. He eagerly preempted any questions: no, he personally had no need for the Gate; it was Mahfouz, God rest his soul, who was the reason he’d come here from his village, though he’d sworn to himself he would never leave it again. He’d finished his service a couple of months back, and gone home to his village to settle down and raise a family in his father’s house, and to begin to deal with the land issues that had multiplied in his absence.

He and Mahfouz were around the same age; they’d been raised together, had fallen sick with measles together, and had left elementary school together to work in the fields. That was until all the farmable land around their village dried up and the landowner began to quarrel with their families over the few meager acres they leased and lived off. So he and Mahfouz started shift work at Fino Bakery instead, then worked as plumbers, installing shower pipes, and finally were conscripted when they both came of age. Shalaby was selected to be a guard in the Servant Force, assigned to protect the wife and children of a Middle Sector Commander, and thus relieved from more difficult duties, while Mahfouz was chosen for the Quell Force. It was Mahfouz’s sworn duty to protect and defend the country from Godless infidels, unscrupulous rebels, and other filth who were bent on destruction and had an insatiable appetite for dirty money.

Mahfouz never dawdled when given an order, and because of his massive frame, the Commander positioned him in the advance guard. In every clash and battle, he stood there, an impregnable fortress, and not once did anyone break through the wall that was Mahfouz’s solid body. These were the stories his fellow guards told, but they also said he was dutiful and kind; he never quarreled or complained, he sang the Commander’s praises day and night, and his only response to orders was
“Yessir.”
He cleaned the army vehicles, cooked meals in the mess hall, and fixed the electricity: he knew why it cut out and how to repair it, thanks to his early years in the village. He advanced when given the command, struck as soon as he heard the signal, and never paid heed to rumors. He was a model member of the security forces and thoroughly dependable.