The Old President and the New President

N.S. Ahmed

Heliopolis Palace, where the Old President broods over his impending handshake with the New President. He is drinking coffee alone on a balcony overlooking a sweeping grove of date palms and rosebushes, irritably awaiting a crew of second-rate photographers to wrap up the arrangements for his final photoshoot. A momentous event, certainly, but the more he considers it—the extravagant production, those pompous lensmen, and the wait in this bright, brain-pounding heat—the more and more he measures the anatomy of the balcony balustrade: the symmetrical curves, the roughly 120-cm-tall height, and the colonial white marble. Arduous, but possible. He could escape this damned photoshoot if those tired legs of his managed to bound over it and, with decent aim and the mercy of the Almighty, crash-land into the manicured shrubs that the Palace servants had watered and pruned. Or perhaps falling to the ground would do the job just as nicely. Yes, shatter his wrist bones, recover in some hospital, and move on to greater affairs. But the Old President would never risk doing such a thing. Instead, he hisses obscenities at the phantom of his deadbeat secretary who had first convinced him of the idea: imagine the impact of your handshake with the president-elect... the photo will be framed in every café across the Capital... the children of the nation will read about it in their school textbooks... paramours will make love every night beneath such a decade-defining gesture... He sips the remaining dregs of his coffee, the taste a flux between milk and earth, and regrets ever accepting such an offer. But it is late, too late. The New President will arrive soon, and the photographers will call out his name so he can shake his hand. There is no avoiding what has already been written, as the saying goes, and so he closes his eyes, relishes the brief peace the wind brings—that motherly feeling of his silver hair being brushed back—and daydreams of the balcony ledge. The curves, the height, the marble. One version of the dream has him somersaulting over it like some Olympic athlete. Another has him walking away with disgrace amassing in his poor heart. But the version that troubles him the most takes place earlier in the year when, as the New President’s campaign trail had faltered between obscurity and desperation and the Old President was projected to win re-election for another six-year term, he had witnessed an image so bizarre and perverse in the national page of the Al-Ahram newspaper that he immediately jumped off the balcony and accepted whatever pain may come. On that yellow and dog-eared page, the New President’s face had been a younger, mirrored version of his own. There was no denying it. In the grains of that black-and-white photo, the New President carried the Old President’s facial topography: his razor-trimmed beard, his Roman nose, and that infamous small mole beneath his right eye. The handiwork of plastic surgeons no doubt, for the country had entered an obsessive age of mimicry, and back-alley offices and private clinics were booming with flowing business. Still, to have the nerve to challenge an incumbent with his former self was, in the Old President’s eyes, the highest insult one could commit. He skimmed down the rotten page and—with his ghostly cataracts forcing him to squint—grew fearful of the text accompanying the image: I know you’re reading this in the comfort of your balcony, you dying bastard. Oh, what’s this? Do you think I’m the product of plastic surgeons? Ha ha! I never took you for a comedian, Your Excellency. Perhaps the caffeine from the ahwa—and is that... it is, café au lait, my how French of you!—is making you a bit delusional. Allow me to put it to rest, I am as real as the sorrows of your past, the illness presently eclipsing your brain, and your soon-to-be burial grounds. Does that help? Oh no, I guess it didn’t help at all! Tell me, why is your heart rate suddenly spiking? Did this newspaper—these words, this photo—scare you that badly? It did! You must settle down, Your Excellency, or else you’ll hurt yourself with all this discomfort. Breathe in the delicious air. Good. I’ll meet you soon enough. Panicking in this dream variation, the Old President rushed to the ledge, muttered a prayer to God, and fell. At the moment of impact there was no impact, nor was there gravity or pain or peace. There was only a rough shaking and an impatient voice repeating time for the picture time for the picture. The Old President wipes the crust from his eyes and wakes up to the sight of two Palace servants rocking his shoulder. “It’s time for the picture,” one of them urges. “The New President has been patiently waiting for you,” the other adds. “Alright then, alright,” the Old President responds, gesturing for the men to give him space. He slowly rises from his seat, gazes upon the ledge one more time—the curves, the height, the marble—and is escorted to a room full of mahogany furniture, pots of drooping carnations, objets d’arts gifted by global regime circles, aimless assistants, and a sea of shooting equipment. Waiting for him at the center is the New President, beaming with the Old President’s youthful face. The lead photographer begins shuffling items around and directs the two Presidents to get closer—more, more, even more—to ensure they capture the perfect shot. “Right there, beautiful! Whenever you both are ready,” the lead photographer tells them. The Old President wants to vanish and the New President, noticing, inches towards his ear. “May God bless another era of our Republic,” the New President whispers, smiling as he extends an arm so pathetically thin that the Old President is tempted to snap it in half. “And may many great days continue to come,” the Old President whispers back, shamefully squeezing his hand as he turns to the camera’s blinding, timeless flash.

about the author
N.S. Ahmed

N.S. Ahmed

N.S. Ahmed is an Egyptian-American writer based in New York City. His writings have been featured or are forthcoming in publications such as Joyland, Passages North, The Margins (AAWW), The Lumiere Review, The Offing, and the New York Public Library. Currently, he is a CUNY Pipeline Fellow, a CLS Scholar, a TEDx speaker, a Periplus Collective Fellow, a Shenandoah Editorial Fellow, and a recent graduate and Hertog Research Fellow at Hunter College's MFA program for creative fiction. He is presently working on a novel and short story collection.