Mohab- Beloved

Resting his head back on the leather seat, he watches the dizzying lights of Cairo swim by as the taxi races across the bridge at 3AM.

The glittering towers, fluorescent green minarets and golden street lights fly by him like waves. His head hurts after the long flight, the shock of the sudden heat that hit him as he had stepped out the plane.
The tarmac was so hot; it exuded a strong odour, one mixed with the oppressive airplane fumes. It smelt like home.

He had watched a man in front of him step onto the gravel, put down his heavy bags, crouch down and kiss the ground in the Muslim sojood position; a heartfelt, gut-wrenching thanks to his God for bringing him back home safe.
The sight must have bewildered the British passengers on board, but Youssef understood. Ten years in London still hadn’t changed him enough to forget the intricacies of the Egyptian culture.

He rests his head against the leather, its smell blending with the ice-cold air conditioning that the driver has kindly put on full blast, assuming that this poor, white-skinned tourist could not adapt to the 37 degrees at night.

Youssef tried to explain that he was Egyptian in his best Arabic accent, yet the British lilt slipped through and the driver was not fooled. To everyone here in Cairo, you are not one of us if you don’t look, speak, spit, talk and dress the same. To him, Youssef is another khawaga, here to have a good time and spend many Euros on the Giza Pyramids, the Nile’s casinos and pretty women, yes?

Youssef is here to bury his best friend.

The biggest misconception about dealing with death is that your mind becomes a blur. It doesn’t. Youssef is painfully alert, his tired and shocked brain recording every miniscule detail around him like a harried photographer: the torn leather at the back of the driver’s seat, his swollen hands from the heavy overnight bag that he'd dragged through the terminals, the crowd of happy faces at Cairo Airport's arrival hall: none of them were waiting for him, none of them understood.

Your senses are heightened, the breath through your lungs feels loud and cold, you feel strong, uncontrollable fury; and you believe that every single moment here now is poignant and must be remembered later on.
I must write this down, he thinks, I must record this so that I don’t ever forget. I don’t want to.

His mind snaps through different images like a quick reel of Polaroids: he sees his desk at Canary Wharf and the ugly coffee mug stain he’d left; the rain clouds gathering outside as his taxi raced towards Terminal 5, the forest green shag carpet on his bedroom floor that he had stared at unblinking when Hossam had called him to tell him about Mohab.
He sees her.

This image catches him off guard. He hasn’t thought of her in months, yet now back in this city haunted by her intoxicating perfume, it’s only natural that her memory would return.

Her milky white thighs, the smell of the nape of her neck, her small hands travelling down his spine like rain against a window; this all comes flying back into his unprepared head. He is grieving for his best friend, and all he can think of now is some woman.

Some woman.
She had undone her long brown hair, let it fall out of her grasp onto her shoulders, watching him, asking him.
There is something about the Egyptian woman; he can’t put his finger on it. Something about the tilt of her hips, the sparkle in her eyes when she laughs, the flirtatious hands.

London is full of the most beautiful, intelligent women he has ever met in his life. The astonishingly gorgeous real estate agents, the Italian waitress at the bistro underneath his flat in White Chapel, the Swedish models at Harvey Nics; the city is brimming with beauty.
Yet.

He had scooped up her legs, cupped the flesh of her calf muscles and kissed her knees delicately, and she had laughed. Her eyes were like butter; and the smell of her hair blended with her hot skin and that perfume of hers.
Even now, even as he remembers fleeting photos of her face and his hands wandering around her thighs; he can smell her hair.

He wonders where she is now, whose bed she sleeps in; if she ever thinks of him. Does she wrap her legs around someone else’s hips, holding his back against her chest; kissing his shoulder wing?

She was once his, and yet he ruined it all. She had followed him to London. They met for an awkward coffee in Portobello Market, and his noncholance made it all significantly uncomfortable. She got the message, returned to Egypt, blocked his phone number and changed her email address. He was effectively wiped out of her life. Null. Non-existent.

At 3AM, there still is traffic on the bridge over Ramsis Train Station. Incredible, laughable; he understands why people choose to leave and why others love this city so devotedly.
Like the memory of the scent in her hair, there is something about Cairo that is so intriguing, so intoxicating. Something that pulls the man back every time; a deep sense of belonging and nostalgia, the memory of friends and family waiting for you with open arms and generous smiles.

People laugh a lot here, carrying crippling burdens of weight, telling jokes at funerals, when the country has suffered yet another devastating defeat.
It’s the laugh of the madman, of those who have nothing to live for other than the flow of the Nile and the light of the moon in the madness of Downtown Cairo traffic.

He wishes he could call her and tell her about Mohab. Of all his friends, she had loved him the most; for his silly laughter, his generosity, the fact that he would come running if ever Youssef needed help.
This is how you look out for each other: here, you don’t turn to the police, you don’t rely on the ambulance; your friends are your security web, your source of solace.
Here, your friends are family, and when one of them dies; you lose a thread in the web, and life comes a little undone.

“I take you to Garden City, yes?” the driver calls out, interrupting his thoughts.
“Yes, El Harrass Street, please,” he answers.
“At the hotel?”
“No hotel, man, I’m not a tourist.”
“Sorry, sir, but your accent… your skin. So you’re a son of the country, like me?”
“Yes, like you.”
“Home for fun?”
“I’m here for a funeral.”

The driver’s face changes, and he takes his eyes off the road, turns around to stare at Youssef and says:
“No Strength and no solace unless with God; I am sorry.”
“Could you please keep your eyes on the road?” Youssef asks nervously.

“You know,” the driver turns back to the road momentarily, and then back to Youssef with an earnest face, “the Arabic saying: We are all from God, and to him we shall return.”
“Yes, yes, I know that one,” Youssef stammers, eyes fixated on the crowded road that the driver refuses to look at, “I speak Arabic just like you.”

“Really?” the man seems genuinely surprised.
“Man, I told you that I’m Egyptian,” Youssef tries to contain his anger.

It’s late, he needs his bed, a few hours sleep, so that he can wake up in time for the funeral tomorrow morning.

He had missed the burial. According to Islam, the body is buried after the next afternoon prayer; no time is wasted. The body must be in the ground, covered in dust, mud and a concrete cover before you have time to take in the shock.

It’s quick, it’s shocking; but it’s effective. No open coffin, no elaborate funeral service; only the closest male relatives handle the burial, and women are not encouraged to attend.

The prayer for the dead takes place first, where the coffin is laid out inside the mosque and the men pray for the soul of the dead, pray that God will shine a light in the dark, guiding the soul in its loneliness. Then the coffin is placed in a car, and the car drives slowly in a quiet procession to the burial ground nearby.

Men align the car, walking with their hands against the car, some crying openly, others surrounding the family on either side in support and solidarity.

Youssef has missed all this. He feels an exhilarating mixture of guilt and relief, a Molotov cocktail that won’t leave him for a while.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Mohab had told him when he’d driven him to the airport months ago, four words that neatly summed up his response to Youssef’s nonchalant banter about letting that woman go.

A fucking idiot. Mohab was the only one who could call him on his crap, who could shake Youssef out of his arrogant little ‘London bubble’ as he liked to call it.

Mohab knew him best, loved him since they were awkward, gawky 14-year olds at Port Said Language School.
Hanging outside the school grounds, they’d smoke cigarettes behind the bus and pssst at young girls walking past.
Careless, young, enthusiastic about everything that life in Cairo had to offer; the world was theirs to be taken.

Mohab was going to buy a yellow Mustang someday, and Youssef would be his wingman.
Together, they would drag-race through the empty streets of Heliopolis’ ring road, catcall at lovely shapes passing by, drink Blue Label out of the bottle and smoke fat Cuban cigars. Those were their humble aspirations to growing up together.

“I should have made a move on her before you did,” he remembers Mohab laughing, "I know how to treat a woman right."

They had both met her at a rooftop in Garden City, her hair flung back as she dangled her long legs off a bar stool. She teased, she giggled, her eyes flirted with the room, the darkness and the Cairo evening sky.
She was irresistible. He was a fucking idiot.

He pays the taxi driver with the crumpled fifty pound note he had stashed in the back of his wallet, a faded paper passed through countless hands, smelling of grime, dust, exhaustion, car fumes; the very smells that make up Cairo’s DNA.

Inside his family’s dark flat, he is not surprised to see his parents waiting up for him. Of course they would.

His father rises slowly, old knees stiff with burgeoning arthritis and clothed in his white gallabeya, walks towards him quietly and waits as his mother engulfs him in coos, tears and queries about his appetite.

His father stands behind her, timid, tired, eyes avoiding his; and as they hug, he feels him leaning on his shoulder a little too hard and holding his son a little too long.
He realizes, shocked; that his father is crying quietly.

“I am so sorry, my son,” he says and clears his throat, as Youssef stares at his father’s face in horror, “He was like my son too, you know.”

The last time he had seen his father cry was ten years ago, in solitude when he had thought no one was watching. It must have been his birthday or his retirement party; Youssef can’t remember.

And now, at 4:30AM, his father’s dark, lined cheeks gleam indiscreetly as he pulls away, again avoiding eye contact and trying to regain composure.

Mohab would be mortified, he thinks; wait till he hears about this.