The Internet

Tomorrow we will get the internet installed to our phone line, inshallah. On Thursday, the man from Nile OnLine came to our apartment. We heard the elevator slam on the fourth floor, which is always a sign of a visitor because everyone who lives in our building knows the elevator door on the fourth floor slams if you just let go of it. When the doorbell rang, I involuntarily shivered; I always think that the harbinger of bad news will be standing out there. Too many times our doorbell has rung unexpectedly and it is usually an Egyptian man speaking incomprehensible-to-me Arabic, once trying to sell us glasses and plates from a cardboard box, another time wanting to check our gas meter, and then there is the one who rings every morning at six (we think, sometimes we hear the bell ringing, it pierces our sleep but now it just might be a specter of that first encounter, he is punctual if anything) with an as yet undetermined problem that we think has something to do with either our air conditioner or our garbage disposal.

The Nile-OnLine man brought us a contract to sign and then issued us receipts for the installation fee, one month of service, a three-month insurance policy on the wireless router, and three-month rent charge for the router itself, all totaling 740 gineh. “But when will you install the internet?” we asked. “Oh, in a few days. Sunday. Or Monday.” “You will come on Sunday?” we said. “Maybe Sunday. Maybe Sunday morning.” “So you are coming on Sunday morning?” We are holding onto the money, not wanting to let go of it without a promise. “I will call you. On Sunday,” he said. “So we will see you on Sunday morning, inshallah,” we said. “Inshallah,” he said, and backed away slowly. "Sunday!" I yelled after his retreating form. We probably won't get it until after Eid.

Everything I eat is made of two or more of the following: cheese, bread, bananas, fruit jam, eggs, lentils, butter. My stomach is closing itself to me, it is closing up like a fist. "You have been very cruel," it hisses. "Who told you to eat fruit from a tree?" "I had to," I say. "It would have been rude, unbearably rude, not too. I would have died of shame." There is some bacterial intergalactic war being played out in my digestive tract.

I haven't had nightmares for a few nights now. I've long-abandoned my ritual of laying out on the carpet and taking deep breaths before climbing in bed; there are ant armies marching our carpet countryside and besides, I've been sick. When the drape is closed in our bedroom, it stays nighttime all day anyway. We wake up and can't tell if it's dawn or noon or night again. I could have sworn I heard rain the other day and pulled it back and thrust my hand out the window, squinting at particles of dust catching light from headlights and store signs and mistaking them for water: I felt nothing, it was dry.