With the tumultuous events currently underway in Cairo, today’s post couldn’t be more timely. I am very excited to present the elegant and powerful prose of Egyptian-American writer Dalia Azim, whose novel-in-progress brings us the compelling saga of an Egyptian family, with drama set in both Egypt and the United States. Behold the first chapter of The Survival of the Species:

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ALL OF YOU ARE GAMAL ABDEL NASSER

They were crammed almost twenty to a truck, cheek to cheek on the hard wooden benches. No one was talking. Half the men were asleep. The goal was to make it to Alexandria by morning. Khalil had originally considered it an honor to be tapped for the prime minister’s personal detail, but it was beginning to feel more like punishment. There hadn’t been an opportunity for a shower in days, so the covered back of their truck smelled like a pile of rotten onions. Khalil had been hinged to these men for more than a month, since September of 1954. Despite the constant contact, he wasn’t acclimating to them.

Khalil had a clear view out the back of the truck: desert. The person planning their itinerary was a fool, sending them on delirious circuits up and down the Nile Delta. Gamal Abdel Nasser and the others at the top of the ranks flew from destination to destination, always arriving at the next stop hours ahead of the caravan. Khalil and his cohorts had logged five hundred miles the day before, and today they were tracing the same route going in the opposite direction. Khalil’s mother worried about his new assignment, but to Khalil the job largely meant boredom. He assured his mother that the streets had quieted down altogether since the revolution.

The air turned brackish as they approached the coast, signaling their arrival. It was dark, which meant time for sleep. Khalil grabbed his duffel bag from underneath the bench and waited impatiently for the truck to pull over. The city rose up to the right. The sea fell away to the left. The main road curved along the edge of town, separating the buildings from nature. The lead truck pulled abruptly onto the shoulder, and the vehicles parked nose to rear. All of the officers clambered to get off at once, with Khalil jockeying for first position.

There was a steep but short drop-off to the beach. Khalil gained momentum and kept on running. He stopped at the edge of the water and fell to his knees, indifferent as to whether anyone was watching. His face was so dirty it felt stiff. Plunging it into the sea, Khalil held his breath and sunk down until he could no longer hear anything.

“Better?” his commander asked peevishly when Khalil returned to where the men were setting up camp.

“Yes, thank you, sir,” Khalil said as he reached into his duffel for his sleep sack.

He set himself up a good distance from his men, but not far enough away to seem impertinent. Khalil couldn’t decide which way to face: one side was a whirl of cigarette smoke; dead fish carcasses perfumed the other. Settling onto his back, Khalil turned his attention to the sky. Usually he could locate the constellations within seconds, but he was confused as he stared at the stars now, in their slightly different arrangements.

Khalil woke what felt like only minutes later with the sensation that he was drowning. He gasped and sat up for air. His commander stood over him laughing as he emptied a water bladder onto Khalil’s head. Khalil slapped at the rubber pouch, which sent it swinging limply from side to side, dripping out the last of its contents.
The lieutenant laughed and stepped away. “I thought you liked the water.”

Khalil tasted salt on his lips. He didn’t know how much longer he could contain his discontent. He was entering his sixth year of service, which had included several months on the battlefield. He was among the first of his classmates to be conscripted in 1948, when war broke out against Israel. He’d just turned eighteen at the time and as one of three brothers was ineligible for a waiver. The battle went poorly from the start. Contrary to popular assumption, Israel knew how to fight back. The entire Arab world had banded together to vanquish their tiny, fledgling neighbor, but in the end Israel had the support of the West.

Khalil watched as his commander walked to the water’s edge and refilled his rubber bladder. The lieutenant held his dripping ammunition out at arm’s length as he carried it toward his next victim. Khalil opened his mouth, but before he could call out a warning, the attack was already underway.

Several officers stood bathing in the shallows. Khalil decided to join them. He stripped down to his undershirt and briefs, which used to be white but were now decidedly gray. Khalil didn’t care. No one around here looked good. He was ready to meet a girl and get married and find a way out of this business. Using his fingertips, he tried to work the stink out of his armpits. The effort only resulted in spreading the stench to his hands. The first lieutenant blew his whistle from the shore and gesticulated to the bathers to come out of the water. Khalil didn’t fear the man anymore, but he had to pick his battles. He waded out slowly and took his time pulling on his uniform.

Khalil filed in behind the rest of his unit. They were halfway up the embankment, halfway toward civilization. Dense rows of buildings loomed just on the other side of the highway. Traffic streamed in from both directions, blocking the soldiers from crossing. Finally two men at the front were dispatched to stop the cars. It used to bother Khalil when the army—with him as part of it—needlessly exercised its authority, but now it troubled him less.

Khalil had only been to Alexandria once before, and that trip hardly counted. He’d been too dispirited then, in the days right after the war, to properly appreciate the city. He remembered the pale-faced stately buildings that snaked along the coast, though his memory didn’t do them justice. During Khalil’s last visit to the city, a fellow soldier had seethed in Khalil’s ear about wanting to blow up the Art Deco beauties—anything that looked European. A lot of good that would do, Khalil had responded. He couldn’t imagine at the time that the British would ever loosen their grip, though they let go control of Egypt only four years later.

The rally was set to take place in a public square. The park was already at capacity by the time the officers arrived. Those at the head of the line parted the crowd, clearing the path for those behind them. Khalil faced no resistance as he made his way through. The unit formed a human U around the podium, packing in tightly shoulder-to-shoulder. Khalil thought forty bodyguards was overkill for a man who was only second in command. The only real threat to Abdel Nasser seemed to be the blunt force of the country’s love. Everywhere they went, people came out in droves, populating the city squares to their limits. In these circumstances, men and women strangers stood closer together than decorum allowed for, their bodies touching as they crowded in Nasser’s thrall. Khalil no longer related to the excitement of the crowd. He’d heard the same tired speech at least thirty times at this point. The rhetoric remained constant from town to town, with quips peppered in to appease the local populations.

“Gamal! Gamal! Gamal!” the crowd chanted now.

Each time they shouted, the sound echoed deep in Khalil’s gut, awakening his need to piss. Khalil wanted to tell everyone to shush! Nasser never came out before it was time. As the minutes passed, the intensity of Khalil’s need to urinate mounted. He grew desperate thinking of how long these rallies could go on.

Finally, Nasser walked out onto the stage, his gait casual yet commanding. Nasser moved behind the podium, and the crowd started shouting his name even louder. The microphone screeched as Nasser leaned into it. A violent hush settled over the masses. Today’s speech would be broadcast all across the Arab world, as were most words that came from Nasser’s mouth these days.

Half the men in the crowd sported mustaches like Nasser’s. Everywhere Khalil went, the air smelled faintly of mustache wax. In retaliation, he shaved whenever he got a chance. Khalil very rarely landed a spot right in front of the podium—usually he stood to one side or the other of the lectern—but today put him directly face-to-face with the prime minister. One second Khalil thought his leader looked like a movie star, and then his face would shift and he was pure Cro-Magnon.

A street car rattled in the distance, drawing Khalil’s attention away from the prime minister. The shadows of a palm tree cut across the toes of Khalil’s boots, chopping up his feet. Khalil’s extremities were large compared to the rest of his body, which was compact but strong. His older brother Hassan was easily the handsomest of the three of them. Khalil had been the one to inherit their father’s dark skin and bearishness, while his brothers turned out bony and feminine. It had been years since they were last together, before Hassan left for England to become a doctor of economics. Khalil had never confronted Hassan about his traitorous behavior. All that fighting to get the British out of Egypt, and like a dog Hassan had followed them home.

“I don’t want you chanting Gamal!” Nasser shouted, his tone shifting all of a sudden. “We need to get serious.”

Khalil snapped to attention, his leader’s voice invoking an inner subservience. Nasser told them that everything they wanted could be theirs, as long as they were willing to fight for it. Khalil’s spine stiffened. He was done with fighting. He never wanted to fight again. The war had diminished him in ways he couldn’t account for; all he knew was that he felt like a smaller person than before. Khalil didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, only that it wasn’t this. It had always been easier for him to identify what he didn’t like, rather than what he did.

A loud pop echoed through the air, followed by a hiss. Khalil fell to his knees, instantly transported back into battle with bullets blowing past his head. Khalil held the head of a grade-school friend as the man bled out through a hole in his brain. At the time Khalil had thought about becoming a doctor; now the idea seemed absurd. In that moment Khalil had thought he’d find a purpose in saving people, but he no longer believed he was right for that job.

Several more bullets tore through the air. Khalil bent as low as he could, slamming his forehead against the ground. A loud smack echoed between his ears. He was sure he smelled the sharp tang of blood. The bullets were too many and too quick to be counted. With his consciousness divided, Khalil lost control and pissed himself.

“Everyone stay where you are! Everyone stay where you are! Everyone stay where you are!” Nasser shouted, his words punctuated by another screech of the microphone.

Khalil looked up to find legs rushing into the narrow divide between his body and the podium. He lost sight of Nasser. Khalil knew he should be among those bodies rushing forth to serve and protect, but he couldn’t move, paralyzed by shame and fear. The wet fabric of his pants clung to his skin. Crouched and wet and delirious, Khalil tried to make sense of Nasser’s continued existence. As close as the bullets had sounded, it didn’t seem possible that all of them had missed.

“My life is for you!” Nasser screamed, his voice frantic. “My blood is for you! My life is for you! My blood is for you!”

Khalil peeked out from under the shell of his arms again, stupefied by Nasser’s callous bravery.

“Let them kill Nasser!” Nasser wailed. “It doesn’t matter as long as I have instilled honor and pride in you!”

How was it possible?

“Stay where you are!”

Khalil’s bewilderment turned to understanding.

“My countrymen, stay where you are!”

This was all an act.

“Everything I do is for you!”

Khalil sat up, no longer afraid, wanting a better view—a clearer idea of what he was meant to glean from this performance.

Nasser’s voice was angry and passionate. “It doesn’t matter if I die,” he said, his voice nearly breaking. “Because even if I die, all of you are Gamal Abdel Nasser!”

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Dalia Azim’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Other Voices, and Columbia: a journal of literature and art, among other places. She’s also published essays on art in Aperture and the exhibition catalogues Greater New York 2005 and Blanton Museum of Art: 110 Favorites from the Collection.