Chicago Read online

  Chicago

  Alaa Al Aswany

  The Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany's second novel is a bit of a curate's egg, or maybe a mullah's omelette: on the one hand it's a racy campus novel set among the Egyptian émigré community of the University of Illinois, while on the other it's full of undigested lumps of socio-political commentary that appear to have been cut and pasted from an encyclopedia. But despite the catastrophically pedantic opening chapter, there are some treats. The best characters are worthy of an Arabic David Lodge, particularly Professor Graham, a sad, pony-tailed relic of the 1960s counter-culture who pores over his revolutionary press cuttings as if they were sacred relics; and Dr Ra'fat Thabit, more American than the Americans until his daughter runs off with one. Then at the other end of the scale there's the preposterous, pot-bellied villain Danana, a student informer for the Egyptian security services, whose features cloud over "just as a character's face changes from good to evil in science fiction movies", which makes you wonder if a bad science fiction movie is where he really belongs.

  Alaa Al Aswany

  Chicago

  To my mother and my father,

  hoping I haven’t disappointed them

  Chapter 1

  Many do not know that chicago is not an English word but rather Algonquian, one of several languages that Native Americans spoke. In that language chicago meant “strong smell.” The reason for that designation was that the place occupied by the city today was originally vast fields where the Native Americans grew onions, the strong smell of which gave the place its name.

  Native Americans lived for scores of years in Chicago, on the shores of Lake Michigan, growing onions and herding cattle. They lived peacefully until the year 1673, when a traveler and mapmaker by the name of Louis Joliet, accompanied by a French Jesuit monk named Jacques Marquette, “discovered” Chicago. Soon thousands of colonists descended upon it just like ants on a pot of honey. During the hundred ensuing years the white colonists waged horrific genocidal wars, in the course of which they killed anywhere from five to twelve million Native Americans throughout North America. Anyone reading American history must pause at this paradox: the white colonists who killed millions of Indians and stole their land and other possessions were, at the same time, extremely religious Christians. But this paradox is resolved once we learn about the prevalent views in that era. Many white colonists believed that “American Indians,” even though they were, somehow, God’s creatures, were not created in the spirit of Christ but rather in another imperfect and evil spirit. Others confidently asserted that they were like animals, creatures without a soul or conscience, hence they did not have the same value as white men. Thanks to those convenient theories, the colonists were able to kill as many Native Americans as they liked without any shadow of regret or feelings of guilt. No matter how horrific were the massacres they conducted all day long, it did not detract from the purity of their bedtime prayers every evening. The genocidal wars ended with a crushing victory for the founding fathers. Chicago was incorporated as an American city in the year 1837 and in fewer than ten years had swelled to sixteen times its original size. Adding to its importance was its location on Lake Michigan and its vast pastures. Then the railroads made Chicago the indisputable queen of the American West.

  The history of cities, like the lives of humans, however, suffers vicissitudes of happiness and pain. Chicago’s black day came on Sunday, October 8, 1871. In the west of the city lived Mrs. Catherine O’Leary with her husband, children, one horse, and five cows. That evening Mrs. O’Leary’s animals were grazing quietly in the backyard of the house. At around nine o’clock, one of the cows was suddenly bored, so it decided to leave the backyard and go to the back barn, where its curiosity was aroused by a kerosene lamp. It circled around the lamp for a while and stretched its neck to sniff at it, then suddenly it responded to a mysterious desire to give it a strong kick, whereupon the lamp overturned and the kerosene spilled and the floor caught on fire. There was a pile of hay nearby that was ignited, and soon the house burned down, then the neighboring houses also burned down. The wind was strong (as is usual in Chicago), so the fire spread everywhere. Within an hour the whole city was engulfed in flames.

  The catastrophe was made even worse by the fact that the firemen were exhausted from staying up the whole previous night putting out another fire that had damaged much of their equipment, which was primitive to begin with. The flames soared in the sky and began to devour the houses of Chicago, which were mostly made of wood. People’s loud, anguished cries mixed with the sound of the raging fire as it gutted the city, producing a frightful din, as if it were snarling a curse. The scene was frightening and mythical, like the description of hell in holy scriptures. The fire raged mercilessly for almost two full days until it was finally extinguished at dawn on Tuesday. The damages were tallied: more than three hundred people killed, a hundred thousand (about one-third of the total population) left homeless. As for monetary damages, they exceeded two hundred million dollars in nineteenth-century monetary values. The catastrophe did not stop there: fire and destruction brought forth total anarchy. Roving gangs of miscreants and criminals, thieves, murderers, addicts, and rapists spread like maggots coming from all over to wreak havoc in the unfortunate city. They began to loot contents of burnt-out houses, stores, banks, and liquor stores. They guzzled liquor on the street and killed whoever crossed their paths. They abducted women to gang-rape them publicly. In the midst of the catastrophe the churches in Chicago organized special masses and prayers to lift the pain and suffering, and all the clergy spoke in a sincere penitent tone about the catastrophe as just punishment from the Lord for the spread of heresy and adultery among the citizens of Chicago. The destruction was so rampant that whoever saw Chicago at that time was certain it was irrevocably lost.

  But what happened was contrary to expectations. The enormity of the catastrophe was such that it motivated Chicagoans and gave them courage. A merchant by the name of John Wright, who throughout his life understood only the language of numbers and deals, and who was never known for literary inclinations to eloquence, found himself standing in the midst of dozens of shocked and bereaved citizens milling about after having lost all they had to the fire. Suddenly a mysterious, poetic energy burst forth from him and he improvised a speech that was to become memorable in the history of the city. John Wright held out his arms in front of him and his features hardened in what looked like pain (he was a little drunk), then shouted in a loud, cracked voice, “Courage, men! Chicago did not burn; it entered the fire to get rid of its bad elements and will come out stronger and more beautiful than it has been.”

  Thus the latent instinct for survival was sparked and the natural solidarity that unites people at dangerous moments erupted. The survivors started working tirelessly — armed volunteers ready to die for their city joined forces and began to chase and fight the gangs, killing them or forcing them to flee. Dozens of nongovernmental shelters were opened and donations poured in to provide food, clothing, and medical care for thousands of homeless families. Tens of thousands of dollars were pumped into Chicago from all over America for reconstruction and investment in its commercial projects. Reconstruction, however, caused new problems; the city council passed an ordinance prohibiting the building of wooden buildings because they had caused the fire to spread. This ordinance resulted in higher rents, which meant that most inhabitants of the city remained on the street because they couldn’t afford the rent in new buildings, especially since labor had become so cheap as thousands of non-Chicagoans poured into the labor market. The economic crisis worsened to the point that hordes of poor and hungry people staged violent demonstrations, raising signs with the clear-cut three-word slogan: bread or death. But the American capitalist system was able, as u
sual, to present a temporary solution to the crisis — one never mentioned in the history books. Investments created several new millionaires while the majority of the population remained in abject poverty. Despite that, John Wright’s prophecy came true. In a few years Chicago was more beautiful and stronger than it had been and was crowned, for many years to come, as the most important city in the West, as well as being the third largest American city and a major center of commerce, industry, and culture in America and the world. A popular song at the time claimed that “Chicago is queen of the West once more.” And just as parents pamper their children more after the latter survive deadly diseases, many endearing nicknames were used to refer to Chicago. It was called “Queen of the West” because of its importance and beauty; the “Windy City” because of its strong winds throughout the year; “City of the Century” because of its amazing expansion in a short time; the “City of the Big Shoulders” in reference to its extremely tall high-rises and the abundance of workers among its citizens. It was also called the city of “I will,” in reference to the ambition that impels Americans to converge on it in search of a better future; and the “City of Neighborhoods,” in reference to seventy-seven neighborhoods throughout the city where different ethnic groups lived: black, Irish, Italian, German, etc. At the time, each neighborhood preserved the culture and customs of its inhabitants.

  More than 130 years have passed since the Great Fire, but its memory lived on like a scar on a beautiful face, recalled by Chicagoans from time to time sorrowfully and emotionally. The word fire acquired a different meaning for them. If anyone anywhere in the world uttered the word, it wouldn’t have quite the same impact as it would in Chicago. Fear of fire has led to the city’s development of the best firefighting system in the world. A firefighting academy was established on the site of Mrs. O’Leary’s house where the Great Fire started. Thus the citizens of the city did their utmost so that the tragedy might not be repeated. Officials in the city, half jokingly, but proudly, have come to repeat a famous saying: “The firefighting system in Chicago is so efficient that it warns you of a fire even before it starts.”

  HOW WOULD SHAYMAA MUHAMMADI KNOW all this history, having spent all her life in the Egyptian city Tanta, which she rarely left other than to attend a relative’s wedding or to go to Alexandria and spend the summer with her family as a young girl? Shaymaa came from Tanta to Chicago, in one fell swoop, without preparation or preliminaries, like one who, not knowing how to swim, jumped into the sea fully dressed. Anyone who saw her roaming the hallways of the medical school at the University of Illinois (in her loose, shari‘a-dictated garb, the veil covering her chest, her low-heeled shoes and wide, straightforward strides, her rustic face unadorned by any makeup, turning red for the slightest reason, and her faltering, heavily accented English, which made communicating by gestures easier than speaking) must have wondered: what brought this girl to America?

  There are numerous reasons:

  First, Shaymaa Muhammadi is one of the most accomplished and highest ranked graduates in the Tanta College of Medicine. She is extraordinarily intelligent and has a legendary capacity for work, which makes her devote long, continuous hours to studying without sleeping or getting up except to perform her prayers, eat, or go to the bathroom. She studies in a calm manner and with deep concentration, without haste or impatience. She spreads the books and notes on the bed, crosses her legs, and tilts her head a little to the right, letting her soft hair cascade down the side of her head. Then she bends, and in her beautiful, fine handwriting she writes down the main points of the lesson and proceeds to memorize them. She savors that, as though indulging in a favorite hobby or weaving a garment for a faraway lover. Her unmatched distinction in her studies easily earned her an official Egyptian government scholarship.

  Second, Shaymaa is the eldest daughter of Ustaz Muhammadi Hamid, principal of Tanta Boys’ Secondary School for many years, during which dozens of students graduated and assumed prominent posts. Five years after his death people throughout the governorate of Gharbiya still remember him with love and appreciation and sincerely pray for mercy on his soul as a rare model, almost extinct, of a true educator: in his dedication and integrity, his firmness and kindness toward his students. However, Ustaz Muhammadi’s life, like that of all others, was not without setbacks, as providence chose to deprive him of male offspring, giving him three daughters one after the other. After the third one he stopped trying, much to his grave chagrin. But he soon overcame his sorrow by channeling his unbounded love to his daughters and raising them just like his students at school to be straightforward, studious, and confident. The result was dazzling: Shaymaa and Aliya were instructors in medicine, and Nada, the youngest, an instructor in the department of communications in the College of Engineering. Thus the education and upbringing that Shaymaa received played a role in her accepting the challenge and the scholarship in America.

  The third and most important reason: Shaymaa is over thirty, still unmarried because her position as instructor in the College of Medicine has greatly reduced her chances, since Eastern men usually prefer that their wives be less educated than they. Besides, Shaymaa lacks the instant qualifications for marriage: her loose garb totally hides her body, and her face is not strikingly beautiful. The most that her plain features leave a man with is that she looks familiar, and that, of course, is not a sufficient incentive for him to marry her. She is not rich; she lives with her sisters and mother on their salaries and the pension of her father, who refused throughout his life to work in the prosperous Arab Gulf countries or to give private lessons. In addition, and despite her academic excellence, she is totally ignorant of methods of seduction — methods that most women are good at and which they use skillfully, either directly by preening and using perfumes and wearing tight and revealing clothes, or indirectly by using titillating modesty, enticing coyness, or awkwardness fraught with meaning and a captivating, voluptuous stammer coupled with meticulously using the weapon of the distant gaze enveloped in sadness and mystery. Nature has provided women all these real techniques for the preservation of the species but, for one reason or another, decided to deprive Shaymaa Muhammadi of them.

  This does not mean at all that she suffers a deficiency in femininity. On the contrary, her femininity is overpowering and would suffice for several women to lead a natural life; but she’s never learned how to express it. Her feminine desires persist so much that they cause her pain and make her irritable, capricious, and prone to weeping fits. Nothing relieves her tension except her forbidden dreams of the famous Iraqi crooner, Kadhim al-Sahir, and her stealthy bouts of delight in her naked body (after which she repents every time and performs two prayer prostrations in sincere penitence before God; but she soon does it again). The psychological pressures that she’s suffered because of her failure to get married thus far were a direct reason for her traveling to the States, as if she were running away from her situation or postponing facing reality. For many months Shaymaa exerted strenuous efforts to complete the requirements for the scholarship: she had to fill out applications and forms and go on endless trips from her college to the university’s administration and vice versa. Then there were those violent and complicated negotiations with her mother, who as soon as she learned of her desire to travel, erupted angrily and yelled at her, “Your problem, Shaymaa, is that you’re obstinate, like your father. You’ll regret it. You don’t know what it means to be away from home. You want to travel to America where they persecute Muslims and while you are veiled? Why don’t you get your doctorate here and protect your dignity in the midst of your family? Remember that by traveling you lose any chance of getting married. What good would a PhD from America do when you are a forty-year-old spinster?”

  The idea that a girl might travel alone to America for four or five years was alien to the family, acquaintances, and perhaps the whole of Tanta. But Shaymaa’s diligence and persistence and her resorting to violent quarrels sometimes — and to begging and crying at other
times — forced her mother finally to acquiesce to her desire. Shaymaa’s enthusiasm kept increasing as the appointed time drew near. Even in the last days she had no fear or anxiety. And when it was time she was not affected by the tears of her mother and sisters. As soon as the plane took off and she felt that little tightness in her belly, she felt quite refreshed and optimistic. She thought to herself that only at that moment was she turning over a new leaf and leaving behind the thirty-three years she’d lived in Tanta.

  Her first days in Chicago, however, were contrary to what she’d expected: headaches and exhaustion due to jet lag, insomnia, and interrupted sleep and harrowing nightmares. Worse than that was a feeling of dejection that never left her after she landed at O’Hare Airport. The security officer was suspicious of her and made her wait out of the line, then fingerprinted and began to interrogate her, fixing her with an untrusting gaze. But the scholarship papers she carried, her extremely pale face, and her voice that grew softer then totally disappeared from sheer fright all dispelled his suspicions, and he dismissed her with a wave of his hand. Shaymaa stood on the moving walkway with her large suitcase (her full name and address written in India ink on it, the Egyptian peasant way). The hostile reception made her somewhat dejected. She soon discovered that the walkway on which she stood was moving inside a giant tube intersecting with hundreds of neon tubes, making O’Hare seem like a children’s toy that had been magnified thousands of times.

  As soon as she left the airport, she was dazzled. She saw streets so wide she could not imagine they existed anywhere and gigantic skyscrapers that spread as far as the eye could see, giving the city an enchanted mythical look like those in comic books. She saw waves upon waves of Americans, men and women, streaming forth from all directions like giant lines of ants moving fast and earnestly, as if rushing to catch a train about to leave the station. At that moment she felt like a stranger, lonely and lost, as if she were a straw tossed about by a tumultuous ocean. She was overcome with a fear that soon turned into a bellyache pinching her guts, as if she were a child lost from her mother in the crowds of al-Sayyid al-Badawi’s mulid. Despite her strenuous attempts, two long weeks had passed, and she hadn’t yet got used to her new life. At night, when she lay in her room enveloped in a thick darkness penetrated only by the yellow streetlights through the window, Shaymaa remembered sadly that she’d sleep in that desolate place for several years. It was then that she would be overcome with an overpowering longing for her warm room, her sisters, her mother, and all those she loved in Tanta.