At the end of his article, Ehab cited an anonymous proposal that had been sent to the newspaper. It asked the Gate to open up other authorized branches in additional selected hospitals. With more hospitals operating under the Gate, surgery would become easier and more affordable. This move would also put a stop to all the wild rumors that the government was somehow to blame for the injuries, when all it sought to do was help the injured and, of course, protect the rights of its citizens.
Little by little, Um Mabrouk discovered that aside from her snacks, drinks, and cell phone, which at times drew several sub-queues of customers at once, the woman with the short hair attracted even more people just by being there. She watched her carefully, and soon realized that the throngs of people flocking to her stall and seating area had nothing to do with the woman herself but with her radio. Um Mabrouk reasoned that it created an inviting and lively atmosphere, which encouraged people to stay longer and order more drinks and sometimes roasted sweet potatoes and packets of cookies. Based on these observations, she began to invite the woman over to her stall every time she walked by. She was as friendly as could be and used every trick in the book to keep her there, until finally she made a generous offer that the woman agreed to. Um Mabrouk said she would give her free tea for as long as she stayed there, as long as the radio station played what people wanted to hear, not what she herself preferred.
THE BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN
As expected, Violet Telecom’s promotion was a huge success in the queue, and there seemed no limit to the number of free phones and contracts the company was willing to give away. But it suddenly came under close scrutiny when people made an unnerving discovery.
Their phones had begun to record their conversations and were transmitting them to a receiving device in the Booth. Somehow both phone calls and discussions happening around the phone were all being recorded — even when they weren’t actually making a call, and even when their phones were turned off. Ehab confirmed it: he’d been leaked top-secret information that the official in the Booth attached to the Gate was meant to review conversations and determine which of them indicated a degree of threat. He sent his evaluations directly to the basement of the Northern Building, where the conversations underwent a careful process of inspection and classification. These were added to the individual phone owner’s file, and in some cases, immediate actions were taken. Ehab also explained to people in the queue that when everyone’s phones had stopped working a couple of weeks ago, it had been a trial period. The company had been experimenting with the data-collection feature, and caused the outage in order to activate it on all of its customers’ phones, but the feature had worked only briefly. Instead, with the assistance of specialists, the company had hand-selected the most important conversations. It culled the most enigmatic and suspicious ones, those related to the Gate’s security, and put those people under constant surveillance. Then, to bring them into the network, it offered some of them free phone lines.
Ines had solid evidence to back up everything that Ehab had reported. Over afternoon tea, she confided in the woman with the short hair that she’d been shaken to discover she was under surveillance herself. She told the woman about her conversation with Shalaby, in which every syllable and every word had been recorded. Um Mabrouk confirmed the incident. Ehab produced the papers he’d kept, which included the whole conversation and many others. They had been stamped by the Booth and officially approved by the official, and he offered to show them to anyone who wanted to see them. With this discovery, and similar evidence that began to follow it, people stopped using phones, both their own and Um Mabrouk’s, except on rare occasions, and a wide-reaching boycott campaign gathered momentum. When Um Mabrouk announced that she was joining the campaign, her son removed the battery from her phone and took it back home. She rather liked the boycott, and was a staunch supporter. She was excited to join Ehab and his friends, and told her customers the part of the story that she herself was involved in, embellishing it with just a few tantalizing details.
People gradually discovered that the surveillance feature had spread beyond the queue and into other districts. No one knew whether it affected everyone, or just the free phone lines, or only those people whose conversations had been sent to the basement. Despite the public outcry, Violet Telecom continued to give out free phones, and a few days later published an advertisement in The Truth promising its customers a superior new service, with details to be announced in an upcoming offer. The company also warned citizens against believing false information spread by its less fortunate competitors, information that only aimed to tarnish its reputation and to deprive vast segments of the population — particularly the poor — from its free services. Meanwhile, rumors spread that some people whose conversations had been recorded had disappeared; they’d been summoned to the basement and never returned. These rumors left a visceral tension in their wake; people in the queue exchanged names of the disappeared and the dates they’d vanished, distributing flyers with their pictures and pleas to return them unharmed. Even though no one from the queue was missing, Ines was so overwhelmed by the situation that her support for the boycott began to wane, even though she’d been one of its first champions. She grew increasingly timid and withdrawn, and stopped drinking tea with Um Mabrouk.
But the woman with the short hair urged the boycott campaign onward, undaunted by the obstacles ahead. The vast majority of the queue joined her, those who were particularly keen to help rally others from farther afield, and she even considered extending an invitation to the outlying districts. Yet despite the campaign’s growth, nothing in the papers seemed to indicate that Violet Telecom had been affected in the least. Several papers published full-page advertisements featuring its name and bright violet logo. Then an article appeared in The Truth, so large it took up nearly half the front page, which said that Mr. Zaky Abd el-Aal Hamed, CEO, was delighted to announce that Violet Telecom now served more than thirty percent of the population. This meant that it was now the most widely used phone company in the country, and by a significant margin; the next most popular company served no more than five percent.
Yet while no newspapers or magazines covered the Violet Telecom boycott, their pages were filled with enthusiasm for other boycotts — all led by something called the Fatwa and Rationalizations Committee. The first boycott was against a candy factory that owned a well-known chain of stores in several districts. The Committee had discovered that this factory was producing candy made of sugar swirls, in which — in a certain light — one could make out the word “God.” The Committee released a statement calling upon people to boycott the factory, since allowing the name of God to be eaten and digested was the ultimate denigration of religion’s place in society and thus warranted a country-wide campaign.
Shalaby joined this boycott, too, after he recognized the factory’s name from some candy he’d brought along with a few other snacks from a small shop in his hometown. Pleading for God’s forgiveness and protection, he immediately destroyed the candy and burned the wrapper, as people around him cried out in praise of God’s greatness and commended his victory over the factory owner. The man in the galabeya had joined the boycott before him, and the two of them were joined by Um Mabrouk (who asked Abbas to write “Hope Factory Products Not Sold Here” on a cardboard sign, which she then put between two stones in front of the cookies), and the three of them were joined by Mrs. Alfat, who had finally appeared at the front of the queue.