In
“The child-eating man, the child-eating man!"A group of children were chasing a big man with dark skin and scars on his hands who walked ignoring the chants that accused him of being a monster.". From time to time they would throw pebbles at him and he would curl up in a ball on the ground., what caused all the kids to laugh. Among the group was Amira, a seven-year-old Coptic girl who had been born in that village of Asyut, south of Egypt and land of pharaohs, where there wasn't much to do during the summer.
The big man was called Jamal, and despite his adult appearance, he had the brain of a five-year-old child.. He wandered around the village, waiting for a neighbor to ask for help carrying wood, finish the construction of a house or, simply, help ladies collect garbage from the streets. He didn't understand why the children were afraid of him., just like he didn't understand his huge body or why people looked away in pity when they saw him.. With the passage of time, He had learned to ignore insults and put his hands to use..
One night with a full moon, the older children began to tell spooky stories about Jamal., el hombre «come-niños»
Amira had learned in catechesis classes, which he attended in the small Coptic church made of clay, all about compassion and kindness. There was a small orthodox-style figure of Jesus whose expression of pain had been erased by time.. Amira loved to imagine the features of that old Christ; I usually imagined him laughing or thinking., like the wise men of the village. But, He didn't understand the real meaning of compassion until one full moon night when the older children began telling spooky stories about Jamal., who was also sitting with them.
–You eat babies because you can't get enough of goats!!– a boy began to accuse him.
"My mother says you scare women and then they can't have children," another accused him. "Why don't you leave now?"?
The adults hanging around shrugged their shoulders, aware of the cruelty of the children.. But, That night Jamal burst into tears and the group of friends, surprised by his reaction, He began to find excuses to go home and call it a night..
Amira, before leaving, He approached the big man and put a hand on his shoulder.. Jamal smiled as he wiped his snot with the sleeve of his shirt.. That night Amira knew that the pain of others can be a thousand times more terrible than her own.. And he knew that that anguish would not make his life easy.
II
Adolescence was a ruin. Conflicts between Muslims and Copts began to spread through southern Egypt faster than viruses. Some villages were burned completely and the simulations of violence that the children had carried out until then gave way to real violence..
But, there was still room for the smell of jasmine, sesame, rice pudding and first love. Amira lived in love with Michael, one of his neighbors. Suddenly the world was a mixture of daring and curiosity, primary impulses and the constant refusal on the part of the girl's parents towards that love.
"You deserve something more," Amira's mother repeated., as if wanting to design in her daughter the dream life that she did not have.
–What is something else??– the young woman asked again and again..
–At least live knowing that the day your teeth rot you will have money to go to a doctor.
Michael decided to go Cairo. I had heard that in the Coptic neighborhood, the «zabbaleen» (term by which garbage collectors were known) They were doing a good business working with all the waste from the capital.
It was difficult for him to get used to the noise and pollution, but little by little and with the help of his neighbors he began to adapt his hands to collecting garbage. He learned how to cut it into little pieces, how to recycle, how to make it disappear, how each organic waste was valuable and served to feed the pigs. The streets were decorated with banners of the Virgin Mary and each house had a cross painted on the door. In the evenings, Michael went to bed thinking about Amira. Would the girl get used to the smell of the garbage? “No,” he said to himself.. And then he planned how to get rich so he could return to the village and get away from the scavenger life..
It was difficult for him to get used to the noise and pollution, but little by little and with the help of his neighbors he began to adapt his hands to collecting garbage
Amira's parents, however, They had other plans and married her to a second cousin whose family owned a book business in Cairo.. With time, The business began to plummet and they began to sell toilets.
“As long as there is food, there will be shit,” Amira's husband boasted during family visits.. Amira dedicated herself to caring for the sick in a space that the Coptic Church had set up for older people without resources or family.. There he met an Egyptian soldier who had fought in Suez and Port Said, a man of honor who barely remembered anything and urinated on himself.
“Why survival and glory then?” Amira asked him, knowing that she would never get an answer.. In the end we are all bodies that die, thought.
But, one morning, The sick man held Amira's hand for the first time. The girl didn't know how to react., They had never interacted; however, the old soldier seemed lucid and calm.
–I don't know what language I dream in or where my home is.. That's freedom, I. "It's terrible," he said two minutes before he died..
Amira studied old age as if it were an art. He came to the conclusion that the titles and arrogance of young people mattered little.. All the old people I worked with needed the same thing: a potty on time, a kind word and someone who would like to hear your story.
Her husband went on a trip one night and never came back.. He never knew if he had traveled to another land or to another woman.; he didn't care.
One day, crossing a busy street in Heliopolis, saw a tourist sign showing the beauty of his land: the history of the pharaohs of upper egypt, the small Coptic churches, monasteries in the middle of the desert. Melancholy hit him hard and the next day he got on a minibus heading home., after saying goodbye to his old people, to his life in the capital and to that smell of death and urine that surrounded him daily.
Michael worked daily separating garbage. His dream of becoming a major businessman in the recycling industry had been left behind.
Michael worked daily separating garbage. His dream of becoming a major businessman in the recycling industry had been left behind.. I wasn't living bad at all, however. He had enough money to go to Alexandria for the occasional weekend., where he enjoyed the cabarets and the eccentric tourists with burnt skin, but he never managed to save the amount he thought he needed to live with Amira. The shadow of the girl's parents' refusal haunted him even when he was in his fifties and had mastered the art of telling anyone who looked down on him for having dirty nails to hell..
Life, however, It has the same irony anywhere in the world, regardless of language and culture. Michael had to return to the village of his childhood to take care of three cows that a distant uncle had left him when he died.. Of course, like in any predictable love story, He found Amira as soon as he got off the minibus.. She carried a pig tied to a rope in one hand and a book in the other.. They both smiled and began to walk together while telling each other their lives., lives so long that they no longer had time to separate again.
III
And that's how Amira ended up in the garbage collectors' neighborhood of Cairo. Every morning, when getting up, I walked to a garage where a group of children recycled shampoo bottles in exchange for learning to read and write.. There they were safe and they also earned extra money for their families.. Some days I also spent time at a small clinic for Hepatitis C patients., where he cooked dishes of those so delicious that they heal for a while. But, his favorite time was the afternoon, when I helped Michael separate the trash. They both sat surrounded by bags and were unraveling the past and weaving it into their present.. In the end they didn't know what was real and what was memory, but they were old and had built a very beautiful life. The human being, After the, More than discovering truths, he invents them and uses them as he pleases.: religious leaders do it, politicians and lovers.
I met them the last time I went to Cairo, almost a year ago. I spent a day looking for stories in that neighborhood. It was very hot and the smell of garbage was too intense to get used to.. When I saw Michael Amira and I took a picture; Amira both smiled and started talking to me like I belonged to that place. He had spent hours watching very young children move through the garbage; They all work helping their parents and, although I tried not to judge, I did it.
When I saw Michael Amira and I took a picture; Amira both smiled and started talking to me like I belonged to that place
I thought I would find stories of misery and I found a love story. Amira took me through the streets and told me about the children, of patients at the Hepatitis C clinic, he told me his stories: lives of people who work and get ahead, of people celebrating, of people who gather at night and talk and laugh and draw religious motifs on the walls of their houses and decorate their streets with colorful flags.
At the end of the day Amira, he showed me his house. He had drawn a smiling Christ on the door.
"I don't know if I believe in God," he said.. But if God exists he shouldn't be sad, it's like love, love is not sad.
