Status: Emo

Eslam Mosbah, Raphaël Cohen

Description

An edgy new novel of Egypt's Facebook generation
You are bored, bored, bored, stuck in a half-job, berated by your parents and unsure whether you should marry your cousin. You want to change. A chance encounter on Facebook leads you to Emmie and her underground world of strange fashion, drinking, dancing, sex, and drugs. You become an Emo and discover philosophical atheism and practical Satanism.

Sujets

• Gothic
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781617973413
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published in 2013 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com

Copyright © 2010 by Eslam Mosbah
First published in Arabic in 2010 by Dar al-‘Arab li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘ as Emoz
Protected under the Berne Convention

English translation copyright © 2013 by Raphael Cohen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Dar el Kutub No. 13673/12
eISBN: 978-1-6179-7341-3

Dar el Kutub Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mosbah, Eslam
     Status: Emo / Eslam Mosbah; translated by Raphael Cohen.—Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013
     p.     cm.
     ISBN 978 977 416 582 5
     1. English [wit and humor]
     827

1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13

Designed by Andrea El-Akshar
Thanks and Acknowledgment to Decent People
There were many difficulties in bringing out this novel, both in the Arabic and in the English editions. So I must thank all those who helped and supported me to publish this book in its present form.

Big thanks to:
— Chuck Palahniuk (the inspiring American novelist)
— Ahmad Khaled Tawfiq (the Egyptian writer and great thinker)
— Alaa Mosbah (my creative brother and my best friend)
— The American University in Cairo Press (especially Mr. Neil Hewison )
— Raphael Cohen (the professional translator)
— Egypt (my unique country, with all its brave people)

Also I should thank my loving family , my faithful friends, and all those who made me appreciate the value of madness.

Finally, I dedicate this book to the one who changed everything:

Halah

my perfect lady from the beginning, now, and forever

Name: Emmie
Age: 21
Relationship Status: It’s complicated
Political Views: Waste of time
Religion: N/A
Favorite Quotation: I spent years asking who I am. Today I know I’m nothing.
Status: Living in a golden age of decadence<?pageviii?>
Emmie Emmie Emmie Emmie.
You love Emmie. You hate Emmie. You hit Emmie. You shout in Emmie’s face. You’re in tears begging Emmie.
Emmie Emmie Emmie Emmie.
You sleep with Emmie. You spit on Emmie. You quarrel with Emmie. You’re worth nothing to Emmie. You go back to Emmie. You’re jealous over Emmie.
Emmie Emmie Emmie Emmie.
Emmie is the unsolvable equation in your life. You’re not brave enough to leave her, and you can’t get really close to her.
If you went close, you’d get burned.
Ohhh, Emmie Emmie Emmie.
How did you get to know Emmie?
You look at her fake profile picture and wonder about this creature called Emmie. You send her a friend request. You wonder about the secrets of a character who posts photographs smeared with colors like that. You browse her photos and her personal info trying to solve the enigma.

“In the beginning was Facebook.”

For months you’ve been exploring the highways and byways of Facebook in search of a friend. Not a friend in the usual sense. No—you’ve been searching the fake profile pictures and false personal info for a person to change your life.

Screw boredom

You eat bored. You watch TV bored. You play soccer bored. You go out with the few friends you have left. You argue with your dad. You ride the metro. You walk the streets. You look at the sky. Every day of your life the same boring things happen. Boredom is killing you. So you go to sleep, only to wake up feeling bored.
To begin with, you tried to get to know foreign girls living in Egypt. The American and German Universities are fertile ground for your fantasies of exciting girls—rich, beautiful, eager for sex, and maybe they even get high. You know that most foreigners who come to Egypt are not well-off in their own countries. They’ve come to study and live for less. Still, even poor foreigners are very rich in this country. And maybe—along with the hash, marijuana, and speed, the beer, wine, and vodka, and the stripping, threesomes, and foursomes—you’re also looking for European or U.S. citizenship to protect you from today’s hard times.
You surf around for weeks. You force yourself to learn a bunch of foreign lingo. You resort to various bilingual dictionaries and the might of Google search. You join foreign groups and participate on various topics in an effort to make friends. But whenever you send a friend request, no matter the language—English or French, or even Italian, Spanish, or Russian—there’s never a response.
This thought keeps repeating: “You’re Jack the Ripper and you long to kill all the girls on the face of the Earth.”
Finally, you get a response from Linda.
She’s an American studying economics at AUC. She’s stark naked in her profile picture. You try to find something out about her, or another picture, but you can’t. You try again to get her to reply. You’ve put your money on her, and it’s clear you’ll win the bet if you go about it the right way.
You try to come across as a young Arab guy with a western frame of mind. You’ve watched a lot of foreign films and TV shows, and you know how it goes. The sitcom Friends has provided a complete picture of the girls who spend all day looking for knowledge and work, and all night looking for company, sex, and a boring romance on TV or a porn film. By day, she’s a librarian or biologist dressed in prim clothes and prescription glasses; by night, a wild horse in need of an expert rider. You’ll meet her for some small talk, then take her out to dinner to get to know her better. After dinner you give her a lift back to her apartment. She invites you in for coffee or a beer, just to be nice. And of course you accept, all innocent.
You might not score the first time, but it’ll all end for sure in her pink bed, or perhaps on the sacred couch seen in every sitcom.
Half-looking at the computer screen, you ask her in stilted English, “Do you accept my invitation over dinner?”
You understand Linda’s reply, having put it through Google Translate: “It’s too soon for dinner. We don’t know each other very well yet. I can’t ignore the Blue Book just because it’s you.”
Of course you’re dying to know what the Blue Book is. She tells you it’s just a book with a blue cover. But you keep trying to get further information out of her, and your picture of this Blue Book becomes clearer with each response. They hand out instructions on every aircraft heading to Egypt, very simple instructions that show huge respect for this people: Don’t drink from the Nile, it’s poison; Don’t eat Egyptian fruit and vegetables, they’re polluted; Don’t try and make friends with Egyptians, crime is widespread in Egyptian society and resentment at the west and western civilization is present in every Egyptian’s heart; Don’t attempt to buy anything expensive in Egypt because they double the price for foreigners.
Egyptians, in short, are bums, cheats, hypocrites, and sons of bitches.
There are additional instructions for students coming to Egypt to study at a branch of a European university—particularly girls. Things like: Don’t spread your legs for any Egyptian guy, all of them are rabid about sex, and having sex with them is more like being raped. Plus, most of them are mentally ill and have STDs. Make sure you have safe sex and always make your partner wear a condom, no matter how much you trust them and however close you are. Try not to be unnecessarily communicative with Egyptian guys, they’ll take any kind word or ordinary conversation, even a smile, as an implicit agreement to a sexual relationship. Most of them are looking for the chance to marry a European or American in order to get citizenship and escape the clutches of dictatorship, bureaucracy, and poverty in Egypt.
Ninety percent of marriages between foreign women and Egyptian men who live in Egypt end in failure after the husband leaves for the country he’s now a citizen of thanks to the marriage. When there are children, the Egyptian husband gets custody and sends his wife packing, or goes back home again.
“Thanks, Mr. Mailman!” keeps running through your head.
That’s all you could get out of her about that book. What other shockers could it contain?
You give up with her for a while, but try again in the hope of improving your image: “I didn’t invite you to have sex, just to have dinner.”
“You’re asking me out on a date. I’m not stupid. I know how Egyptian guys think. You want to spend a night with me, and maybe you want to marry me and get citizenship through me. That’s fine. I won’t ask you about your job . . . but do you have accounts in Egyptian or European banks?”
It seems that it isn’t only Egyptians who are bums. She’s offering you citizenship in exchange for cash, perhaps she’s offering sex for cash. But you don’t have enough!
Okay. Bye. Look for someone else.
You surf and surf and use more brazen techniques. Your interests extend to European girls abroad and the rich and classy in Egypt and the Arab states.
R ICH AND BEAUTIFUL . F UCK HER !
You send messages like: “I’ve never seen such beauty.” “Will you marry me?” “I’d like to get to know you.” “I really would.” “What do you think about becoming friends?”
Mostly you don’t get an answer, or a hysterical one, or a brush-off: “You must be crazy!” “You’re not human.” “Troll.” “Not you again!” “Fuck off!” Okay, lady, I will.
This thought keeps running through your head: “ You’re Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon. You’re nobody. You’re not the first ma