Mansheit Nasser

A small girl with a broken arm in a sling made from strips of white cloth picks her way between the rocks collecting crushed, empty water bottles. I think, isn’t that interesting, after all this she has the time and concern to clean up trash. Then I realize, maybe she actually needs the bottles to put water in, and I feel guilty and stupid for both thoughts.

This little girl with her makeshift sling is the second sign that something of significance has transpired here. The guards standing around awkwardly with riot garb and plastic shields to ward off the glare and contempt of those that have gathered and telling me that the area ahead is mamnuaa “forbidden” is common to any normal day’s exploration. No, this is not the sign. Were it not clear of rubbish and debris and not just slightly too straight and crisp, like a new haircut, the mountain of rock surrounded by houses could have fit naturally into any informal, Cairene community… so neither is the rock itself a clue. The first hint of catastrophe is the atmosphere.

The scent of solemnity still hangs in the air, and afterimages of what has been seen or heard or felt burns in each set of eyes, blinding, overlaying all present perception and leaving their owners in a zombie-like daze. Walking from the dirt of the last intact alley onto the crunch of the first shards of rubble had been like entering a vacuum. Suddenly all the lumbering, honking, bustling, braying sounds of the city vanished, replaced by a sobering silence of straight faces and stiff backs. The cliff had fallen crushing the world beneath it into a thin sheet of city, sound and self which only the gods could ever unpeel and re-inflate.

* * *

An hour earlier they had tried to keep us from this place, the police and the plain cloths men, back at the road block to Mansheit Nasser. They had doubted that I was really a student. They had doubted that Dina was really an Egyptian.—“Ismik eh!?” “Dina,” She replied. “Dina eh?” “Dina Yehia.” “Dina Yehia?” “Dina Yehia Mahmoud Salah el Din Mustafa Amin,” she rattled off like it was a tongue twister she was proud of having mastered. That had shut them up briefly.—They had told us it was dangerous. They had told us we were not wanted, that the people would be hostile towards us, attack us, throw rocks and slander.

When arguing proved useless we circled Dina’s aubergine Fiat station wagon out of the congested barricade, navigated around a temporary metal fence, and parked out of sight of the policemen in front of a large work vehicle. The barricaded intersection swarmed with microbuses, pedestrians and officers. Vehicles piled up and released as the officers questioned and inspected the private cars entering the area. As we walked back to the intersection we saw two city buses loaded with people zoom through the road block. We walked up the street and hailed every city bus for ten minutes, but they were all continuing along the highway. Finally, we walked up the highway to a smaller road heading into the thicket of houses and picked our way through streets and alleys until we reached the side of the cliff. From there to the rock fall was easy. As we climbed up the rocks to a small plateau a number of guards tried to stop us and turn us back, but residents standing on the plateau chastised the guards and beckoned us to continue.

* * *

Dina talks intently, sometimes almost aggressively, with a man who introduced himself as Hisham. The man is skinny and dark with a patchy beard, close cropped hair and large, sunken eyes. He wears dusty shib-shib ‘flip-flops,’ gray sweatpants, and a dark T-shirt. At the front right of his belt line is a large bulge which makes it look like his hip has popped out of its socket and reminds me of a wearable insulin regulator but which I later witness to be packs of cigarettes tucked into his pants. I listen to the conversation picking up a phrase here and a sentiment there. I stroll around the small plateau watching the small throng gathered around the rock edge which drops off to the dozers and hardhats below. I return to Dina to be informed that Hisham has elected himself our guide, and will show us some of the houses.

As we walk past a boulder the size of a Winnebago Hisham points and murmurs “Taht… nas” ‘beneath… people,’ and pointing at another “Taht… nas” and at another. He tells us that crushed in the rock fall were many of his friends, his sister and his sweetheart.

He shows us in a few houses, and then takes us to the roof of a three story building with a good view of the broken rock mountain. The roof is home to a handful of goats and pen full of chickens. As we look around trying to digest the scene around us, we are joined by a swarm of five little kids. The smallest, Nadr, has a swollen eye and a gash across his left brow. The side of his face is slightly bruised and there is some orange coloring around the injuries that I think might be disinfectant. He smiles and laughs, giggling when the girls pick him up or hold him still, but grows uncomfortable and squirms desperately if they hold him too long.

I am surprised when Hisham asks if I will take pictures. I had wanted to but thought it would be inappropriate. Hisham asks if I can get the pictures into the news papers. I say maybe the school newspaper and that I will put them on the internet. He tells me to put them everywhere. I set to work documenting my surroundings and Dina continues her conversation. At one point while I am taking pictures of a small girl named Malak who proved to be both a saint and a scoundrel and quickly came to command both Dina’s and my affections, a second man emerges onto the roof and scolds me for taking pictures of the children, but Hisham says no, there must be photos of everything.

As the sun begins to set we are invited to share iftar, the breaking of the day’s fast, with Hisham and his family. Dina and I each say that it is up to the needs of the other, but it is clear to both of us that we will stay.

While Dina prays I am given more of the tour. In each room Hisham will point at things—a hose bringing water into the kitchen, a wall that has been repeatedly patched and re-plastered, a ceiling made of cracking, buckling timber, a broken bed with dirty sheets, a balcony door hanging off its hinges—and at each spot he makes me take a picture and says something that in my head sounds like “See, and deny it.” I can not determine what he means by this or even if he is speaking English or Arabic, but I take the picture and thank him.

When the meal is ready we sit down on carpets that have been spread out in the street. A woman disappears into the house where Dina was praying and emerges with hard pillows which they insist we sit on. Some of the kids leave and when we ask about them we are told that they are Saydi, from a different part of Egypt, and that the two families do not eat together. It seems an odd segregation to uphold when they have both just shared the same tragedy. The sun sets and we are brought some water and a dark, sweet and tangy drink called tamarhindi. A tray of food is placed on a stand at the center of the carpet. The tray holds flat bread ‘eish baladi,’ two shallow bowls of macaroni with some red sauce, and two bowls with thumb-sized wedges of meet. Everyone is very happy, impressed and a little amused when I eat the meat. It is mushy and crumbly and at the same time as chewy as gum. Many pieces have a thick, stretchy, white lining on one side. I discover that the best strategy is to chew until the piece begins to break down and then take a bit of bread and swallow the bite whole. After her first piece Dina has been tactfully avoiding seconds. I am later told that the mystery meat is goat spleen.

The assembled group of about ten people all find Dina and I quite amusing. They ask if we are married or engaged or live together. We tell them no we are just friends from school. When Dina goes inside to help with dishes the men switch to grilling me on weather I smoke, or drink whisky, and they are very disappointed when I again say no.

We drink tea and then say our good byes. They ask if we will return. We say we hope to, and we mean it. Dina and I are escorted back to the highway by the kids, a small boy on my shoulders and Malak and another girl named Dunya dragging Dina by each hand. They talk about when we will come back and visit. They talk about how Dina will adopt them and they will all live together in an apartment. We leave the kids a block from the highway, and walk back to the Fiat in relative silence. I ask Dina if she is happy and after an uncertain silence she says that she is happy she made the trip. It has been six days since the rocks fell. Each day we told ourselves that we would come, and each day we pushed the thought behind a growing stack of reading assignments, schedule snafus, school woes and apartment dues. When we finally came we did not find a fallen cliff but rather a community resolutely standing upright, and a moment of glaring perspective.

We turn the car around and drive back up the highway, craning our necks as we pass the place where we snuck into Mansheit Nasser, paying it our condolences and committing it to memory. The days have passed, and the stack of readings and errands once more dominates our vision. We are like the little girl with the broken arm, or Nadr with the torn brow, struggling to absorb the situation despite its immediacy. We feel the pain, but it is fleeting and then forgotten. We smile and life goes on.

—To Malak, Nadr and the rest,

May the breath of God re-inflate your luck and your lives

And thank you to Dina Yehia for seeing the excursion to fruition