“So how about you go home,” I told him, “and come back if it turns out to be a revolution? I promise I would come get you myself. I’ll pay for your taxi to the revolution’s front door.”
He was annoyed by my sarcasm, but was persuaded in the end to go home. I put him in a taxi at the edge of the square.
“Don’t leave unless it gets too violent. Don’t give up too soon.”
“You really want to get rid of me, don’t you?”
“Don’t be scared of getting caught,” he said in a serious tone. “I would get you out.”
“Yeah, sure, because you have so many police officer friends.”
“No, but I’ll find people who are friends with the bastards.”
I finally said good-bye to him and went back to wait for the inevitable moment of dispersion.
11
The vegetables at the greengrocer’s looked fresh. Eggplant it was, then. I selected a few of the large black ones, feeling them with both hands to make sure they were neither too soft nor too hard. They had to appeal to my sense of touch, as did the few tomatoes and green peppers I picked next. I also got baladi onions. It baffled me that some people preferred the milder shallots. There was fresh garlic, so though I was only going to need a few cloves, I picked two bulbs. With garlic in particular, I always liked to buy more than I needed. I paid and carried my plastic bags to the nearby corner store. I didn’t like big supermarkets and preferred instead to go to this small store, five minutes’ walk from my place. I got a large can of tomatoes, a bottle of vegetable oil for frying, another of corn oil, a large packet of salt—I was out of salt—and a medium-sized bottle of vinegar. Then I went to the butcher shop right next door. I asked for three-quarters of a kilo of ground beef and watched as the butcher pressed and minced it. The bags were getting heavier in my hands and leaving marks on my fingers. I added the bag of ground beef to my load and set off on foot. At the spice store I asked for an assortment: nutmeg, ground mint, black pepper, ground coriander, some mastic. The bags were heavy. I considered taking a taxi home, but decided to walk. There was no bakery nearby, so I thought I’d later ask the building’s caretaker to get me a few loaves of baladi bread. Back home, I dropped the bags on the floor and threw myself onto the sofa. The pain I was feeling was real—it didn’t go away when I rubbed my hands. The bags were on the floor before me. I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I woke up three hours later, I had no idea where I was.
You are the hope, the world, the dreams
When you’re pleased I smile to the hidden days
Warda’s voice would help me cook. The bags had been waiting on the floor for hours. I stood in the corner of the kitchen and unpacked them. Then I started peeling the onions. I didn’t like food processors and preferred to chop the onions by hand to get the size and shape right: small cubes that were still thick enough to add substance to the recipe. To that end I would endure the tears and burning in my eyes. I placed the onion in a small saucepan with a bit of butter. Warda’s voice continued to flow out of my laptop.
I love you as much as what has passed
I love you as much as what’s yet to come
She could be so optimistic, Warda. Though she somehow managed to reach the heights of optimism and the depths of depression in the span of the same playlist. The onion turned golden. I added the ground beef and covered the saucepan. Now I needed to peel the eggplants. They were just right, not too soft and not too hard. I wondered if I should peel all of them, but no, six would be enough for a medium dish. Once they were peeled and sliced, I placed them in a big bowl of water and added a couple of drops of vinegar. I cut the remaining onions, the green peppers, and the tomatoes into rings, then heated some oil to fry everything.
There was a lot to think about. My relationship with Ali hadn’t changed. His innocence, his passion, the fresh look in his eyes—I was still in awe of all these things. I did not tire of looking into his eyes.
I told my father about Ali and he listened with interest. “Do you love him, then?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. He is just significant. You know when you feel like someone is holding on to the leg of your pants—you don’t want to give him your pants but you don’t want to kick him away either. You just want him to stay near you.”
My father laughed at my unromantic analogy. I really wasn’t sure how I had become so attached to Ali in such a short time. Maybe it was just a period of general susceptibility. There was a lot of passion in the air—demonstrations and intense emotions everywhere you looked—and we must have simply been susceptible to falling in love. Nothing was stable, and love was the opposite of stability. Ali himself was the opposite of stability.
I fried the green pepper rings. The meat was done. I ground the garlic cloves the traditional way: wrapping them in a plastic bag and crushing them using the bottom of a glass. It was a primitive method but it produced the exact consistency that I wanted. I let the garlic sizzle in a little bit of ghee, then added some vinegar for the taqliya, releasing an aroma that characterizes
