The Queue (15 page)

A guard from the Concealment Force stopped her at the hospital doors and asked for her ID. He directed her to the Investigations and Instructions Desk, where she left her ID card and took a temporary one. She headed to the main sign with its list of names and arrows, and from there toward the surgery department, following signs that led her down a long corridor with exits to other departments branching off on both sides.

The floor was covered with what looked like rubber; it was dark and an indeterminate color, and the ceiling loomed high above her. The dull gray walls almost seemed to hold the shadows of people who had passed before her, and appeared even more imposing as they towered above her. She felt a coldness in the air, and shivers rippled through her body despite the sweat that was beginning to form along her hairline. Several
doctors in white coats with distinctive badges walked past her whispering, but she didn’t see the doctor who had visited her at the office, and was reassured a little by this. She looked behind her; she was the only one in the corridor. The last sign pointed toward the surgery department, and she turned down the corridor, then continued until she reached the secretary’s office, where she stopped and summoned all the courage she possessed.

She stood before the official in silence; he was busy with a thick notebook open in front of him. Her eyes swept over the writing on the forms, searching for a word about Yehya, but she wasn’t used to reading upside down. He noticed her attempts and closed the book quickly, and raising his hand at her, he asked what she wanted by standing there. Her quick, forced smile seemed to have no effect.

“Good morning. I need a copy of an X-ray that was brought here about two months ago.”

“What’s your name?”

“Actually, it’s not under my name, it’s for Yehya Gad el-Rab Saeed.”

“What’s the relation?”

“He’s my cousin—my mother’s sister’s son.”

“Do you have authorization to pick it up?”

“I don’t, actually … I lost it.”

“We can’t just hand over an X-ray to anyone who walks in here. Not even if belongs to him, not without authorization.”

“But he really needs it, the doctor asked him for it, said he needed to get it, as quickly as possible, and it’s so hard for him to wait for another X-ray, there are so many people ahead of him, and he’ll have to wait maybe a whole month until he gets his turn … Please, will you help? I’ll do anything.”

He looked at her with disinterest, and then opened the notebook again and looked through the names. He asked her if she could remember the date Yehya was admitted, give or take a week or two. She could, but when he searched again he realized that the time period she’d told him included four days that hadn’t been entered in the book. His eyes narrowed, almost maliciously, and he stood up and reached over to a huge cabinet. With difficulty, he removed a medium-size file wedged between the massive folders and ran his finger down a list of names on the front.

“His name is here. He was injured in the Disgraceful Events. You should have said that from the start.”

“I just came for the X-ray, to be honest, that’s all … I don’t know anything about anything else … Do you think I could have it? Please?”

“Of course not. First of all, you need a special form, particularly in cases like this, signed by the doctor who treated him here, and then you have to bring me authorization from the director himself, stamped by him and by the hospital. And secondly,
ya madam
, I don’t have the X-ray. It’s in the filing department on the fifth floor, and just so you know, no one’s permitted up there.”

The color had left her face; the official knew how Yehya had been injured. Her attempt at naïveté had failed, but she maintained her composure, refusing to be defeated so quickly, and decided to see it through to the end. She asked him for the name of the doctor attending to Yehya’s case and where he could be found. He ripped a scrap of paper from the corner of a roll that happened to be nearby, scribbled something down, folded it, and held it out to her. He bade her goodbye with a mocking glare, and she hurried away. She didn’t open the
piece of paper until she was far from the window and sure she was no longer in range of his sneering gaze, which felt like it pierced right through her.
Dr. Safwat Kamel Abdel Azeem
—
Fourth Floor, Special Cases
. She put the scrap of paper in the inside pocket of her purse and took out her cell phone, and saw several missed calls, all from the same number. She called the number back, and an unfamiliar voice picked up on the other end.

“Amani? It’s Ehab, Yehya and Nagy’s friend. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Perfect timing, though. Are you in the hospital?”

“I’m out front. Do you need any help?”

“I think so.”

“Right, I’ll meet you at the entrance. I’m wearing a light-blue shirt and sunglasses, and I’ll be holding a newspaper.”

Amani quickened her pace back along the corridor to the lobby. She felt a sense of relief to no longer be dealing with this alone. She watched the entrance from afar, pretending to be talking on the phone so that none of the staff would ask her what she was doing or offer to show her how she may have strayed. Ehab appeared a few minutes later. He walked over to the Investigations and Instructions Desk and showed them his ID card, but after standing in front of the official for what seemed like an age, he became obviously exasperated with the conversation. Amani began to worry, and her heart beat faster when she saw Ehab tussle with the man and the other officials behind the counter.

She watched several guards rush over, shouting at Ehab, and they didn’t lead him away so much as carry him by his hands and feet to the hospital door before throwing him out. A tinny announcement echoed through the lobby, broadcast over the intercom on repeat, asking for her, Amani Sayed
Ibrahim, to come to the Investigations and Instructions Desk immediately. She was now back at square one, or maybe even square zero. The Concealment Force was trained to catch people trying to infiltrate the place, and if she responded to the announcement, they would throw her out, too. Wildly, she wished the official would change his mind and let her have the X-ray, whether out of sympathy or complicity, but she knew that was impossible. She needed to act decisively, fearlessly. She didn’t have time to weigh her options, and there was no way of knowing what was best. She abandoned the idea that Ehab would return and pushed hope of the official’s sudden kindness far from her mind. If she wanted the X-ray, she would have to get it on her own.

She looked around. No one was following her, and she walked toward the elevator as the announcement was repeated for the tenth time. She pushed the button and slowly stepped out onto the fifth floor when the doors opened. Her eyes wandered across the large, barren space, which looked like it had been emptied of everything it had once contained. No people, no chairs, not even signs like those she’d followed on the ground floor, past hospital wards, offices, and officials. Nothing at all. She studied the high ceiling as the elevator doors rolled into motion and closed behind her. There was a doorway connected to the lobby, and she cautiously slipped through it and walked through the narrow corridors until she noticed a closed door. This, she suddenly realized, was what she had come for. Next to the door was a pink plaque made of some strange, shiny metal, and engraved on it were the words
DEPARTMENT OF CRITICAL BULLET FILES
. She grabbed the cold metal door handle, but there wasn’t enough time; the elevator opened again and angry voices clamored over one
another. She couldn’t understand a thing they were saying, but she recognized a face in the confusion, the one face she’d hoped never to see at a moment like this.

Ehab tried to get back into Zephyr, but it was impossible. They had posted an enlarged photocopy of his ID card at the entrance and distributed it to the Concealment Force. He headed to the newspaper headquarters, where he met his editor and filled him in on what had happened, and then he set off for the queue in search of Nagy. He didn’t want to tell Yehya what had happened because he didn’t want to worry him, especially as Ehab didn’t have anything reassuring to say. After the scuffle in the lobby and being thrown out of the hospital, he had nothing good to report, and now Amani’s phone wasn’t in service, either. He and Nagy left the queue together, unseen by Yehya, and headed to Amani’s apartment. They knocked on her door for nearly a quarter of an hour, until the
bawab
came up to say he hadn’t seen her since that morning. She was probably still at work, the old doorman said, and he invited them to wait with him in front of the building until she returned.

They sat with the
bawab
for a long time as he made tea, took a few cigarettes out of his pocket and placed them in front of them, and then told them about the building he’d guarded since he was a boy. When he first arrived, the district had been a vast and remote expanse, there were no other buildings or people—just this one, its residents, and the desert beyond. The closest inhabited district was a few miles down the highway. But the place he had known had vanished long ago. High-rise buildings sprouted, scores of people marched in
and settled down, markets opened up, and the area was now bursting at the seams. He let out a grievous sigh and gestured off into the distance with a veiny hand, saying that there was still one empty plot of land out there, vacant and vast. Ehab got excited, as he knew the land the doorman was referring to: it was now under the Gate’s dominion. The old man laughed and coughed, spouting a puff of smoke, and added that although many years had gone by, people were still reluctant to buy there because of its past. Everyone knew what had once stood there: a detention center from which those who’d entered never returned, not even after decades.

The old man said the area had changed a great deal since the Gate appeared, and even more so after it had closed and the queue formed nearby. Back when the Gate had still been open, there was always a huge commotion during working hours, with people shouting. But when its work ended, it became deathly still, and not a single voice was heard, as if no one had ever gone in and no one ever left. As time passed, he told them, people said the weather in the area was always strangely stifling—but only around the Gate—and that sometimes the sun both rose
and set
over the Northern Building, perhaps bowing to whatever went on in there. People passing by it became increasingly wary and didn’t even act like themselves when they were nearby, especially after the Disgraceful Events.

He leaned in a little closer, having decided he could trust them, and whispered that Amani had gone to Zephyr Hospital, that Zephyr Hospital belonged to the Gate, and that he had suspicions about her work, and about her involvement in those Events people talked about. On the night after the Events she hadn’t returned home until after midnight, which was unusual for her, and on more than one occasion people
from strange organizations had come asking about her, although they’d never asked to speak to her directly.

They waited all day in front of her building, but Amani had vanished. Nagy and Ehab returned to the queue to look for Yehya, filled with a greater sense of helplessness than ever before. They both felt guilty that they hadn’t been with Amani from the start. When Um Mabrouk heard the news, she immediately decided to distribute leaflets; Abbas designed them in exchange for a few free phone calls, wafers, and juice, and signed it at the bottom as usual. He made copies at a nearby photocopier, whose owner owed him a favor, and gave her a hundred copies. The flyer featured an old photo of Amani, since Um Mabrouk didn’t have a recent one. Abbas had written her full name with great care, followed by the standard wording for these kinds of cases: an appeal to the Gate to intervene, find the person, and investigate the strange circumstances around the disappearance. Um Mabrouk put the flyers next to her wares, wailing and lamenting her eternal bad luck, and explaining—even in the absence of customers—that Amani was like a daughter to her. When she’d buried her elder daughter the day after she died, Amani had come from so far, cried like no one had ever cried before, and hadn’t even gone home until the funeral was finished and all the lights were out.

The man questioned her about her name, age, marital status, education, profession, and place of residence, but it was clear that he already knew all the answers. Then he leaned back from the desk and asked what Amani was doing on the fifth floor when she knew it was a restricted area. She tried to remain as calm and polite as possible, and apologized. She wasn’t familiar with the place, she said, she just wanted to pick up her cousin’s X-ray, and was running late for their meeting with the doctor. He was bound to come looking for her, and would tell her family, she added, who no doubt were worried sick because she hadn’t called. Amani was standing in the middle of the room with the pink sign, where they’d brought her once they’d found her. The room was filled with files stacked so high that she couldn’t see the walls. She had a vague sense of fear and the feeling that she was somewhere she shouldn’t be, but she trusted that she could talk her way out, and her thoughts remained firmly on Yehya and helping him. The man said nothing. Someone she couldn’t see came up from behind her and stopped in front of him, addressing him with effusive respect.

“Safwat
basha
, there aren’t any files under the name Yehya Gad el-Rab Saeed here, sir.”

“That should be sufficient for you,” he said to Amani. “We have no files under that name here, so don’t go troubling yourself and troubling me, too.”

“But I know he was transferred here to Zephyr Hospital, and left two days later.”

“Excellent. Then clearly he had no reason to stick around, and no need for treatment.”

She raised her voice in response; his comment had provoked her, and she grew angry when she realized he was enjoying toying with her.

“No, there was a lot he needed—there was a bullet in his pelvis, a bullet from when he was shot during the Disgraceful Events.”