History Will Not Be Made on This Couch

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2012 51 History Will Not Be Made on This Couch Hisham Bustani To the revolutionaries of Egypt who left their couches and burnt their televisions I t’s raining again. Like the winters of my childhood. But my head has changed and is covered in scars. It’s not as light as it used to be. It’s raining. A shower of the Imam’s heavy words falls on my head from the nearby minaret. The last Friday in January isn’t a regular day in my room. Inside the TV, streets are flooding with colorful drops of people, stones, and barricades . Every now and then a barrage of bullets thunders, along with the lightning of Molotov cocktails. The call for prayer gets louder along with my headache and I start diving and diving in search of the child/myself buried under layers and layers of betrayal. “The people. Want. To bring down the regime.” The rain shouts as it becomes a stream that slides down the asphalt road and sinks down a drain right above my head. I feel cold and don’t dare to reach out from under the covers to change the station. My hand would freeze on the way, then rot and fall off. “Aaaaammeeeennnn.” I will lose my hand. “Aaaaammeeeennnn.” I said: I will lose my hand. “Aaaaammeeeennnn.” Okay then. “LEAVE already! Have some shame!” The laborer is shouting at the door of his embassy in Amman. A laborer who would rot in the dead pharaoh’s cellars if the tyrant is resurrected. There will be no demonstrators at the border officers’ kiosk, but he shouts all the same, and men in ties smile for the cameras as they search for someone to lead the chants. “Where are the chant leaders?” says one of the men in ties to the air, and then to his mobile phone: “Where are the banners?” “Have some shame!” “Where are the banners?” “LEAVE already!” I hold an umbrella with a broken handle, and there is no rain. The rain has stopped. In my living room sit a newscaster, political analysts, and the voice of the imam filled with spit. I open the umbrella , curl up underneath it, and find a paper, a pen, crumbs of speech and a sudden sound: trrrrrnnnn. A text message: “U never complain. Anyway I’ll leave u tofinishwhaturedoing.IwishIwaswithutoholdu tight and tell u I have the world in my arms.” Trrrrrnnnn. A text message: “The thugs. They r killing us.” Q: Did any of your longer work begin as a shortshort story, or vice versa? A: I don’t think so. I am more like a Ninja turtle than a Flash Gordon. But in one novel—El velázquez de París (The Velázquez of Paris)—the narrative does begin with a short story, but then, after this flash beginning, it becomes a novel. I treasure the time a novel, or a poem, needs. Carmen Boullosa (b. Mexico City, 1954) is the author of fifteen novels and numerous poems, plays, and short stories. She is a co-founder of Mexico City’s Citlaltépetl Refuge House (page 80). She currently serves as a contributing editor of Books Without Borders and has been visiting professor at San Diego State University, Georgetown, and La Sorbonne. She lives in New York City. For a biography of Kristina Zdravič Reardon, see page 61. Stones and spit and political analysts and speeding cars running over demonstrators and conspiring friends and groups of worshippers buying vegetables outside the nearby mosque their cars blocking the street and an official motorcade complete with sirens emptying the city and I am cold. 52 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY photo : thoraya el rayyes Trrrrrnnnn. A text message: “Comrade, I didn’t expect that from u. I’ll never speak to u again.” Trrrrrnnnn. Trrrrrnnnn. Trrrrrnnnn. Stones and spit and political analysts and speeding cars running over demonstrators and conspiring friends and groups of worshippers buying vegetables outside the nearby mosque their cars blocking the street and an official motorcade complete with sirens emptying the city and I am cold. How will I find that child/myself? How? The television is on fire, and

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