Chicago

Chapter 26

Carol was so terrified she looked pale. Her heart raced, her breathing became irregular, and she almost fainted as she, with her friend Emily, entered the crowded elevator in a skyscraper overlooking Michigan Avenue. Emily whispered something to the elevator operator and he pressed the button for the thirtieth floor. The elevator made a musical sound before it started up. Carol and Emily remained silent; they had talked so much that nothing was left to be said. Carol posed many questions. She hesitated for a long time and almost changed her mind more than once, but Emily reassured her. She looked at her with a mother’s smile and said, “This is the opportunity of a lifetime. If I were in your place, I wouldn’t hesitate.”

“I can’t help feeling ashamed.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of if you look at it from a purely aesthetic point of view.”

They left the elevator. Emily proceeded with Carol, following her to the end of the corridor to the right. She stopped in front of a tinted glass door on top of which was an elegant sign: fernando advertising agency. Emily pushed the button and said her name into the intercom. The door soon opened and out came a forty-something man with his hair in long thin intersecting braids. It seemed from his soft movements and the light makeup on his face that he was gay. He was smoking a fat cigarette from which came a strong smell of marijuana. He exchanged cries of welcome with Emily, who hugged him warmly and kissed him on the cheeks, and then said cheerfully, “My friend Carol. My friend Fernando.”

“Happy to meet you.” Carol shook his hand and struggled to feign a smile.

The apartment was big and furnished in a modern, luxurious style. On the walls Carol now saw enlarged snapshots of faces and landscapes that she guessed had been taken by Fernando, who led them through a long corridor, on one side of which was the open door of a bedroom bathed in a soft red light. At the end of the corridor they entered the studio: a small round room with a very high ceiling in the four corners of which cameras of different sizes were placed. In the middle there was a chair, a small table, and a sofa. From the ceiling hung floodlights casting yellow, blue, and red light. Fernando invited them to sit on the sofa while he sat on the chair in front of them. Then he said in a friendly tone, “Sorry for this mess. I’m a disorganized person.”

“Like all artists.”

“Would you like an excellent joint?”

“No, thank you,” Emily mumbled while Carol remained speechless.

“What would you like to drink?”

“Anything cold.”

He opened the fridge and brought out two cans of Pepsi, and then he said in a practical tone, “Okay, Carol, I don’t want to waste your time. I think Emily has told you.” Carol nodded. Fernando went on, “I must see your breasts first, so we can have a constructive basis for discussion.”

He let out a loud laugh, then shook his head and gathered his braids in his hands and got up, almost dancing. He stood in front of the camera and hit the remote control turning on a floodlight, which made a round spot of shining light on the wooden floor. He signaled for Carol to approach. She got up slowly, and it actually occurred to her at that moment to run away, to open the door of the apartment and run as fast as she could, leaving everything behind and going home to Mark and Graham. But, in spite of everything, she moved toward him as if her feet were moving on their own. Fernando smiled at her gently as if he realized what she was going through. In a calm voice he said, “Take off this shirt, please?”

That was too much for her. She stood there, her head bowed, totally still. He said simply, “I’ll help you.”

He went over to her and began to undo the buttons slowly, as if he enjoyed it. She trembled and felt queasy and thought her soul was ebbing away from her, and yet she succumbed to his hands. He undid the bra from the back and dropped it on the table. Her breasts came down as if freed from a shackle. He turned around, his face having acquired a neutral professional expression. He stood behind the camera and peered carefully through the lens, then he went back to her and adjusted the way she stood in order to examine the image of her breasts in the camera from different angles. Before long he sighed and exclaimed, as if resolving a pending matter, “Not bad. Let’s talk a little bit.”

She extended her hand and covered her chest with the shirt, but to her own surprise, she left it unbuttoned. He sat in front of her and lit a new marijuana cigarette whose end glowed intensely before it produced thick smoke. He coughed hard and said, “This is the story, dear friend. There are two adult lingerie companies in Chicago, the Double X Company and Rocky Company. I think you’ve heard of them. Competition between them is fierce, cutthroat, as they say. They compete in promoting bras in particular because they sell the most. Performance levels in the two companies are close to each other, which makes advertising more important. A few months ago, Rocky started a new advertising campaign on cable television using real women rather than professional models. A woman would appear on television next to her real name and profession. The audience would watch her taking off her clothes and putting on a Rocky brand bra, then she would talk about its advantages. Have you seen these commercials on late-night television?”

“Yes.”

“We must admit that it was an ingenious advertising campaign by Rocky, leading to a twenty percent decline in Double X brand bra sales, which meant a loss in the millions of dollars. Double X has asked me to organize an advertising countercampaign. This is a major professional opportunity for me. If it succeeds, my little advertising agency will make it to the top. I’ve given the matter a lot of thought and I’ve come up with a totally original concept for an ad.”

“Emily has assured me that my face won’t appear in the commercials,” said Carol, looking at her friend as if seeking her help.

Fernando said, “Calm down, baby. We can’t imitate Rocky’s commercials. Our look will be totally different. I will shoot you only taking off a Rocky bra and putting on a Double X one. The camera will not show your face. I will show the viewers by your body language how much more comfortable you feel wearing Double X. That’s the real challenge. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. We will run a lot of rehearsals in order to teach you how to express yourself using your body.”

“Why did you pick me in particular?” Carol asked, her confusion turning into a profound sense of disbelief, as if she were part of a surreal scene that would come to an end at any moment, after which she would come back to reality.

Fernando took a long drag on the marijuana cigarette, closed his lips, swallowed and coughed, then said as his eyes turned red, “In this commercial, the body should not be splendidly beautiful because it would place the merchandise out of the grasp of the potential customer. I was looking for an ordinary chest, a chest like that of most women viewers, an average black American chest that is neither an artistic masterpiece nor very ugly. Did Emily tell you about the fee?”

“One thousand dollars for every hour of shooting.”

“You have an excellent memory for numbers.” He laughed loudly then got up, left the studio, and came back soon thereafter holding a small glass, saying: “We’ll do the first dry run. Please leave yourself totally to me. Drink this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a small glass of cognac that will give you courage before the camera.”

She felt the liquid burning her throat. As soon as she put the glass on the table, Fernando took her by the hand and said, “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

We sat drafting the statement, Karam Doss and I, at Dr. Graham’s house. John participated with the enthusiasm of an old revolutionary. We translated the text for him and he gave us some important ideas. He said, “The language of the statement has to be precise and definitive. If it is rhetorical or emotional, it will not be taken seriously. If it is too militant, as if it were a declaration of war, it will look like a caricature.”

We added some demands: to release detainees, to do away with special tribunals, and to ban torture. We finished the statement in its final form late on Friday night. I got up early in the morning, printed the statement, and made twenty copies, then began my mission: I had to meet Egyptian students and convince them to sign. During the day, I met five students who responded with useless debate, then refused to sign. The strangest reaction came from Tariq Haseeb and Shaymaa Muhammadi, two colleagues from the histology department who are inseparable (I think they are romantically involved). This Tariq is a strange man, very brilliant, but introspective and aggressive, and he always seems to be in a bad mood, as if someone has just awakened him. He, with Shaymaa by his side, listened to me in silence. I described conditions in Egypt and said it was our duty to do something for change. I noticed a sarcastic expression on his face, and as soon as I mentioned the statement, he interrupted me derisively. “Are you kidding? You want me to sign a statement against the president of the republic?”

“Yes, for the sake of your country.”

“I am not interested in politics.”

“When you go back to Egypt, aren’t you going to get married and have children?” I asked him as I looked at Shaymaa. “God willing.”

“Don’t you care about the future of your children?”

“My children will have a better future if I concentrate on my studies and go back to Egypt with a PhD.”

“Why do you accept that they will live in the midst of injustice and corruption?”

“Would their conditions be better after I am detained?”

“Who’d detain you?”

“Of course everyone who’ll sign this statement will be harmed,” said Shaymaa, her very first sentence. I tried to be patient and to explain, but Tariq got up and said, “Don’t waste your time, Nagi. We are not going to sign any statements, nor, I think, will a single Egyptian in Chicago. Let me give you some advice for God’s sake, don’t go down that road — it doesn’t end well. Concentrate on your studies. Mind your own business and don’t try to change the universe,” he said again derisively and grabbed Shaymaa’s arm and the two left me alone. When I met Karam in the evening, I was frustrated. I told him, “I am close to giving up on the idea.”

“Why?”

“All the students I met refused to sign.”

“Did you expect to convince them easily?”

“They treated me like a madman.”

“That’s natural.”

“Why?”

“All the students are at the government’s mercy. If they sign this statement, they’ll actually be penalized.”

“But I’m a student like them.”

“You’re an exception. Besides, you don’t work at the university, hence there’s nothing for you to lose.”

“If everyone thought of it this way, we wouldn’t get anything done.”

“What a dreamer!”

“I am not a dreamer, but I find their position to be selfish and despicable. People like that are the reason we’re where we are. It is from them that the regime chooses its ministers and experts, who turn a blind eye to the truth and who lie and curry favor with the president to keep their posts.”

“Don’t give up,” Dr. Doss said.

“I no longer see the point in what we are doing.”

He smiled and patted me on the shoulder, then took out of his pocket a folded paper. When I looked at it, I recognized it as a copy of the statement with several signatures. He laughed loudly and said, “You have to admit I beat you!”

I began to read the names; they were both Coptic and Muslim names. He went on, not trying to hide how happy he was, “At the beginning I was not enthusiastic about the idea of the statement but afterward I found it to be an excellent idea. And most of those I met have responded well. We will succeed, Nagi, but we have to look in the right places. Don’t waste your time with the students. I’ve brought you a list of Egyptian immigrants in Chicago, with their addresses and telephone numbers. Let’s split the list and contact them.”

During the following days, as soon as I came back from school, I’d work the phone, ringing up Egyptians. I introduced myself as a student who wanted to start a new association of Egyptians, and then I’d ask the person for an appointment to see them. The reactions differed from one person to the next: some told me frankly that they had severed their ties to Egypt and couldn’t care less what happened there. But many of them were quite enthusiastic. I visited several neighborhoods in Chicago. Most Egyptians I met were upset at the conditions in Egypt. At the end of my presentation, I’d ask each of them a direct question, “Do you want to do something for your country?”

I could guess the answer from the way they looked at me: an indifferent or awkward look meant no signature; a friendly look meant that they would sign. By 4:00 p. m. on the following Sunday, when I took the Blue Line going back to the dorm, I had obtained ten signatures in addition to the twenty-nine that Karam got, a total of thirty-nine signatures, in addition to five persons who had asked for time to think about it. That was an achievement beyond our expectations in the short period since we started. We still had a whole month to go. If we continued at this rate, we would get hundreds of signatures. I remembered an article I had read a few years ago about something mysterious in the makeup of Egyptians that made it difficult to predict their reactions. The article asserted that revolution in Egypt always began unexpectedly, that a ferment went on beneath the Egyptians’ calm surface, which made them, at the very moment they seemed to give in to oppression, erupt suddenly in revolution. That theory seemed to be valid. I was overcome with a sense of pride and joy. There I was, doing something for my compatriots who were being beaten up, dragged, and violated on the streets of Cairo, who were detained and tortured in horrific ways just because they expressed their opinions. Soon we were going to embarrass the Egyptian regime before the whole world. In front of the cameras and the international press corps, a person, speaking for the Egyptians in Chicago, would stand up and demand that the president abdicate and that democracy be adopted. There wouldn’t be a more important news item in all the media.

As I walked through the entrance to the dorm, I caught a glimpse of Henry, Wendy’s former boyfriend, sitting at his desk. He shot a disdainful look at me, but I ignored him. I walked slowly so he’d know I couldn’t care less about him. All of a sudden I felt I was strong; I no longer feared him. He could go to hell. From now on, if he oversteps the bounds or utters an insulting word, I’ll teach him a lesson he will not forget.

I got out of the elevator and turned the key in the door of the apartment and as soon as I stepped inside, I noticed something strange; the lights were on, even though I remembered well that I had turned them off before leaving. I went in slowly and cautiously. Suddenly I saw a man sitting in the chair in the living room. I froze, shocked, then shouted at the top of my voice, “Who are you? And how did you get in here?”

He got up steadily and advanced toward me. He smiled and extended his hand to shake mine, saying, “Good evening, Nagi. I am sorry I came this way, but it is very important that I speak to you. My name is Safwat Shakir, counselor at the Egyptian embassy in Washington.”