Rozetta Flees Egypt
From the rooftop terrace of the Four Seasons Hotel, Cairo looked like a dull diorama needing touch up and cleaning. For the last twenty-four hours, Dr. Rozetta Zahra had pampered herself on fluffy pillows and room service before taking her leave of Egypt, perhaps forever. Secluded in her private shaded sitting area, she lazed in lush landscaping, shaded alcoves, and aqua and white-striped cabanas and umbrellas. Three feluccas sailed on a gentle current toward Aswan in the brown light, the sails filled with the last breeze of the day. She had just finished her residency at the Medical School of Cairo University, one of the largest, oldest, and most prestigious medical schools in Africa and the Middle East.
She mused. Why did the sky never cry rain in Cairo? The land was dry, dry, dry, with a few sparse drops in the winter, disappearing in desert. Like a hard rock, she had survived the dust, wind, sand, and heat, without erosion. She felt like an Egyptian mummy, a dull-eyed witness to the passage of time. Joy was just a word for her, an add-on emotion, an accessory to others. She was more cat-like, looking for comfort. She curled up in her overly-large beach towel, and sipped on a watery single-malt scotch brought to her by the vacant-faced waiter. Today she was playing a wingless sphinx, stoic, ageless, unmovable, a mythical creature with the face of a woman and body of a cat, treacherous and merciless, flanking the entrance to temples.
Today was the first day of Ramadan, the only time when school children could climb on the pyramids. She saw them like tiny, colorful ants climbing and sliding over the ancient stones, wearing their best clothes. In Egypt, children’s laughter soon ceased like rain in the desert sun. When she was a child she laughed when her little brother called her “Zizi.” She had decided that this would be her new American name--two syllables were better than three, and sounded less foreign.
She watched a loose thread from her bathing suit quiver in the dry breeze. As she lay there, a film of sand gradually layered over the naked parts of her copper body. The tattoo of a scorpion on her mid thigh faded under the sand. “I’m boiling in dust,” she thought. She looked at her sculptured body and reflected--no great beauty, but her student years had come with regular meals, and she was no longer emaciated, but fashionably thin. She had adequate breasts, just enough to be attractive; overall a tidy, competent body. Her strength was in her hands, powerful from weaving rugs fifteen hours a day from middle childhood. Her friends called her the Scorpion, because she had a claw-like grasp that she used in self-defense.
Unaccustomed to a bathing suit, Rozetta felt strangely like someone else, like the bejeweled wife of a wealthy contractor on a business trip to Cairo, a well-kept woman with a kind husband, a town home in London on a cobblestoned street, children and a terrier, and a perfectly-tuned sports car for weekend trips to the country. She took another sip of scotch, and felt drowsy, as a young moon appeared through the haze of the late afternoon. She wanted the waiter to come back with fresh ice. She loved to plunge her finger into the ice-filled drink to feel the cold until it was numb, and then place the tumbler to her cheek. The hum of the traffic below drew her into sleep.
When Rozetta remembered her dreams, they were boring, predictable, and not at all scary--a subconscious gift to compensate for her struggling, exhausting, shocking and burdensome existence. This afternoon she dreamed herself in a cinema filled with friendly people looking for entertainment, an American Western. Then Rozetta and the audience joined the film in the last scene, when all the conflicts had been resolved, the townspeople were cheering their hero as he rode his horse into the sunset along with his bride-to-be. The audience was enraptured, and recognized itself in the film, walked out of the scene, returned to their seats as the credits scrolled, then exited the theater happy with themselves, and certain they would remain happy, content, and safe.
Jolted awake, Rozetta sensed that a stranger was about to invade her temporary private world. She opened her eyes to see a skinny man with a pot belly and sagging bathing suit approach. He was dark and hairy, and as he moved closer, she saw his large nostrils, so large if he ever laid on his back in the rain, he would drown. In less than an eye blink, the Scorpion struck. As he reached for her, she stretched out her right arm, and pinched his nose. She then twisted, and twisted, and twisted. The man screamed in pain and crumpled like a damp beach towel, his sunglasses falling away onto the pool deck. He walked away briskly, shaking his bloody head. He did not return.
Rozetta realized that the dark abyss of her life had not been emptied or exhausted. The incident was one more proof. What else was waiting out there, impending, red-hot to attack her? What fires were not yet put out, what embers still ablaze? What more would be demanded?
Rozetta had worked in a rug factory fifteen hours a day six days a week from age twelve. Her parents had been members of a Christian Coptic minority that served as Cairo’s informal garbage collectors, the Zarrabas. People called them the “pig-pen collectors” or the “garbage people.” They used donkey-pulled carts to collect, sort, and sell garbage. Rozetta’s special talent for spatial awareness had been developed in the dump. She could make her way back to her home after a day of scavenging by marking the smallest object or constellation of objects in the dump--colored glass shards, plastic containers, yellowed newspapers, soiled diapers, and dead cats. Her brother died from H1N1 influenza from feeding organic waste to pigs.
She lived in constant fear of the spontaneous combustion of organic residues or the fires set to get rid of unwanted waste. The air was always polluted with smoke. There was no health care, no pharmacies or schools; no piped water, sewage networks, or electricity. Her parents made about twelve dollars a month until they were murdered by the military for protesting the desecration of their place of worship.
The rug factory seemed like paradise to Rozetta after living with the garbage people. To ease the minds of tourists, her workplace was called the “carpet school.” Rozetta became highly skilled at making hand-made Egyptian rugs, carpets, and tapestries. Each week, her nimble fingers became more adept and stronger, and she became one of the best rug makers in old Cairo. However, education became an unsolvable problem for Rozetta.
One day her uncle found her living in the trash in a cardboard shack. He took her home, but the next day she was raped by a gang. She was bundled into a car and anesthetized, then taken into a room, hands tied behind her back and raped. Then she was beaten ferociously. It was her first day of school. When her uncle reported the crime to the State Security, the police beat him. He was forced to say that Rozetta ran away from her family of her own free will. A year later, her uncle, who had never recovered from the brutality, died of kidney failure.
The vacant-faced waiter returned, but his face was no longer vacant. He was looking a bit pale, and used his tray to cover his private parts like a Roman shield. He said, “Would you like another scotch?”
“Yes.”
“It’s on the house.”
On his way back inside, he kneeled and discreetly picked up the skinny predator’s sunglasses by a lens. The man with the large nostrils would need to adjust the frames to the new angles of his face.
One day a rich American tourist was going through the rug factory with a tour group, and asked lots of questions about Rozetta, and made a critical statement about child labor. The guide responded with the correct government line, at first, but he could tell this wouldn’t satisfy the man. So while the others in the tour group were having lunch, the guide took him to see Garbage City. The guide said, “This is where Rozetta lived. Do you think she is better off now than before?”
The rich man said, “This looks like Dante’s Inferno, but neither situation is acceptable.”
Every month after this man’s visit, Rozetta received a check from America. She was able to leave the rug factory, get a small one-bedroom apartment, and enroll in school. She excelled beyond her own expectations. She completed her basic education behind schedule because of her late start, but completed secondary school in two years rather than three, and gained admission to the university, and then to the Cairo University School of Medicine.
In medical school, she had demonstrated an unusual facility for surgical techniques. Even though she was told that surgery was a male occupation, she persisted. With little practice she could hold surgical instruments properly, tie knots with one hand, close wounds, clamp and suture--her years as a rug-maker prepared her to be a heart surgeon. Her years tracking the changing landscape of the dump, gave her the ability to accurately see the interior landscape of a human heart.
Rozetta rolled over on her side. The sky turned from silver to steely gray to black like a great eye closing over the earth. A young moon looked broken amid the swarming desert stars. Tomorrow, like Moses, she would flee Egypt.
