While in the process of being fucked from behind, how and whether you rotate your pelvis, to either work with or against the current and momentum of the insistent grunts arriving to your hearing left ear first, can and will have an effect on your own enjoyment of the process of being fucked from behind.
—— if your mind is on the dishes whether there be a mountain or molehill of them ——
—— if your mind is on what you have to do this summer or next summer or what you should have done thirteen summers ago ——
—— and how long has it been, anyway, that that rip in your new, expensive —like, life-purchase-level expensive— couch has been there? ——
—— to summarize, if your mind is hopping jerkily around anywhere it shouldn’t be ——
Bring it back to where the sphincter of your asshole is sucking at where it is being fucked from behind by throne_shaker2 and focus, focussss, breathe. Remember the Cosmo mags you and your sister read together though you’d likely been old enough that the two of you shouldn’t have been reading things like that together anymore, and once on her last visit from Cairo to New York and while breaking the pretentious black wax around the neck of the second bottle of whiskey into crumbles she’d asked you if maybe you thought that was part of why you’d turned out this way, hadn’t you always been a little you know, too close to your sisters?
But leave your sister and stale whiskey talk behind and bring your errant mind back to the content and not the context of your Cosmo memories and remember how often the sex magazine world discovered, and re-discovered, only to re-re-discover, that half of all good sex is breathing
While it is being fucked and its puckered flesh is being slowly, then not so slowly, persuaded to open, communicate, in bold bald terms, how much more savagely it is that you’d like to be fucked please. Tell him you want nothing more than to be torn at your finite edges please, nothing more than literally to split where the two of you meet please. You tell him that in addition to his cock please you want his mouth please and his tongue please but most of all, his teeth. Consider, while he brings his incisors down to pinch two fingers of skin on the back of your neck between them, and while with the insistent downward force of his own head he plunges your face back into sodden cotton, that the conquer of this one small sphincter on your one single body, is enough, you’ve been told, to shake the very throne of heaven. And how is it, you think, that they could have known?
But then it’s——
ground control to Major Tom. ground control to Major Tom.
may God’s Love be with you.
Though your brain is back to hopping jerkily all over the place while you are being fucked from behind with what now sure sounds like pretty crazy abandon from at least one half of the pair of you, continue making the noises you should be anyway.
This is not solely for the benefit of throne_shaker2. Fake it till you make it! Yes, yes, you can reclaim the space of your body! Yes, you can start to feel it again, down to the webbing between your toes.
While you are working to regain yourself, as you continue making the noises you should be anyway, it is good for there to be some kind of logic, some body logic, as to when you let a moan or a groan out, or when and how often you swivel your head and bite your lip as you look behind you at the person fucking you, with crazy abandon, from behind. For example, your enjoyment will seem much more genuine to the person fucking you with crazy abandon from behind if you moan consistently when he thrusts into you the deepest, or the shallowest, or the middlest; whatever the case may be, pick a depth and stick to it. That way when you are being fucked with crazy abandon from behind, you might appear to actually be enjoying being fucked with crazy abandon, from behind.
If you can do none of these things, whether you rotate your pelvis, or whether you don’t rotate your pelvis, will have little effect on your enjoyment of the process of being fucked, with crazy abandon, from behind.
Weed can help with this! Ask for a break!
There are any number of reasons people do this, any number of reasons people ask for a break while being fucked, with crazy abandon, from behind. One might for example need a break to go to the bathroom, assuming one is having the kind of sex that keeps bathroom liquids and solids separate from being fucked, with crazy abandon, from behind. One might need a break just to breathe, so overwhelmed might one be by the prowess, the pure athletic dynamicism of their super duper dynamo stud. One might simply be pausing momentarily before moving into a different, more comfortable, or less comfortable, or more open, or less open, or more frictive, or less frictive, or better-for-the-knees, or fuck-the-knees, kind of position. Though a break of the just-resettling variety will afford you less time and less opportunity to do what it is you actually need to do.
At any rate, if you are being fucked with crazy abandon from behind by someone who thinks of themselves, on the sex positivity side of things, as being Very Extremely Progressive and like, really very GGG, you will not need that much of an excuse. “I need a break,” you can say, and that will be enough. Before rustling out of bed to find the joint in its drawer you’ve prepared ahead of time, make sure to wait until it’s been long enough, make sure to give a few breathless pants in the general direction of your fellow throne shaker, before you begin, all of you nonchalance, to light up. The timing on this can vary but wait long enough anyway that the smoke break you are taking won’t be so obvious as a smoke break—there is nothing less sexy than the visible need to refuel. But make your stomach quiver some and throne_shaker2 will smile with the pleasure of conquest and you will maintain the narrative of having just very much enjoyed being fucked with what sounds like pretty crazy abandon from behind, else you will have to explain why all the moaning then, why, if it wasn’t really doing it for you.
After a drink of water so your mouth no longer tastes like skunk, return yourself to being fucked, with crazy abandon, from behind.
Negotiate the return to coitus however it is you must. If you like putting your face in the mattress and closing your eyes, leaving the point and process of re-entry up to fate, then put your face in the mattress and close your eyes and leave the point and process of re-entry up to fate.
He will take you, like so much someone else’s body.
Inhabit yourself. Re-inhabit yourself. Re-re-inhabit yourself. Re-re-re-inhabit yourself. Re-re-re-re-re-re-re-inhabit yourself. Return your face to your face and your chest to your chest and your stomach to your stomach and your penis to your penis and your asshole to your asshole and your thighs to your thighs and your calves to your calves and your feet to your feet, down to the webbing between your toes. With your grasping hands reach for the skin of throne shaker behind you, and breathe, and breathe.
*The title, throne shaker, is in reference to the belief, located in some people’s understanding of Islam, that when two men have penetrative sex with one another, God’s throne shakes with the violence of His anger.
Mariam Bazeed is a non-binary Egyptian immigrant, writer, poet, storyteller, and performance artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She is completing an MFA in fiction from Hunter College, and is at work on her first novel. Mariam’s poetry and prose have appeared in print and online. She has been a Margins Fellow of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and an EmergeNYC Fellow at the Hemispheric Institute for Politics and Performance at NYU. She has been a resident at Hedgebrook and Marble House Project, and has been accepted to the Lambda Literary Retreat for summer 2018. Her theatrical work has been presented at La Mama Theater in NYC, the Arcola Theatre in London, and at the Wild Project in summer 2018.
Mariam runs a monthly world-music salon in Brooklyn, and is a slow student of Arabic music.
Mazen will be pulled from a street in Cairo; he will not know by whom, or even from which street. He will only know, that moments before, he was running, along with thousands of others, towards a narrow horizon, towards the absence of tear gas, rocks, and gunfire. Some will say he was pulled from beneath the arcade of Baehler’s Alley, while others will say it happened under the highway behind the Museum. And others will say it didn’t happen in Cairo at all: that he was in Alexandria, along the Corniche, or in Aswan, along a different Corniche. In any case, he will be thrown to the ground, or maybe up against a wall, or against, or even through, a shop window; imagine a shoe store, or an airline office, one that doesn’t fly to Egypt anymore: from Sofia, Copenhagen, Mogadishu. His attackers, it will be said, came at him from within the crowd, or from behind. Some will argue there wasn’t any crowd at all, that he was in a safe house, a makeshift triage unit, that it was somebody who betrayed him, who believed Mazen himself was the betrayer. They will be clothed in uniforms of olive drab, or flak jackets of faded black, in apparel indistinguishable from his own. Some will claim he wore imitation designer clothes, like so many others on Tahrir, while others will claim he was dressed in rags, like an ordinary vagrant. And others will insist he was dressed casually, yet deliberately, in the manner of a foreigner, the kind with easy access to an H&M, an Urban Outfitters, a Zara. Early consensus is that neither he, nor his captors, wore the traditional galabiya of a common peasant. Any suggestion to the contrary is dismissed out of hand as nonsensical, the work of a dilettante. Don’t be cute people will tell me this is no laughing matter.
The Republic, with Mazen coursing unimpeded through its dead end streets, will soon collapse unless justice is distributed quickly, and in exact proportion to the demands of public order. And so the first punch lands within seconds, maybe to the temple, or to the jaw. The first kick arrives almost in tandem, to the ribs, the shins, the sacrum. Each blow will sting, then dull, then sting again. If he is to sustain any of it, Mazen needs it to rain down on him relentlessly, without pause. Nobody stops it from happening. The crowds will have already dispersed. There might still be food vendors, t-shirt peddlers, night watchmen – were this nighttime – standing sentry before closed up shop windows, one of which might have been the window Mazen was thrown through, if he were thrown. His attackers will use all manner of invective available to them: Son of a bitch, Motherfucker, Swine, everyday profanities, nothing idiomatic or especially interesting. The facts might one day reveal how one attacker aspired to be a sculptor as a young man, or how another attacker bears an encyclopedic knowledge of Diego Maradona’s playing career, or how another attacker is the father of two young girls he hopes one day can leave Egypt, to Canada, the Gulf, marry a good man and put all of this behind them. Each of them, no doubt, will be shown to be conflicted, imperfect, and easily undone in their own very ordinary ways, just like you or I. But while any man’s absurdity is the only compelling truth he possesses, his basic, animal cruelty can easily be assumed; there’s simply no story to be told there.
So, Mazen’s mind will wander to any number of places with each continuing blow: perhaps a mother he avoided, or a father he doesn’t remember, children he never had, mistresses and infatuations he wished he had pursued more vigorously, a song he had stuck in his head earlier that day, maybe Om Kalthoum, maybe The Smiths. These notions will come to him in cinematic fade-outs of white, or in flickering vignettes of the subconscious. And there will be a video: shaken, blurry, open to interpretation, taken from across the street, from a balcony above it, from around the corner, from a satellite, each in seemingly different corners and under varying qualities of light, some in daytime, some night, all attesting breathlessly to the same event, before scattering across space and time. The video will be posted, shared, re-posted, re-shared, becoming its own self-reinforcing narrative, its meaning shifting from one audience to the next: resistance to some, vigilance to others. Other meanings will be attached to it over time, more than I am able to personally recount. It will be set to music, sometimes Western, sometimes classical, sometimes folk, sometimes religious. Nobody actually sees Mazen’s face up close, but I will be able to recognize him instantly. It will be his body that makes him famous: flinching and writhing, dulled, then inert, occasionally spasmodic, almost balletic. Instantly, he becomes a hero on Tahrir, or what’s left of it, and he will be embraced by Marxists and Islamists alike, or what remains of either of them by this point.
The Marxists will claim he wore a kuffeyeh, drank domestic whiskey, smoked Cleopatras, vigorously and without revulsion. They will describe him as a leader, a teacher, a comrade and a guide, who read Fanon in the original French and performed The Internationale on his oud. They will claim he sported an eyepatch, the result of buckshot taken to the face in the early days of the Revolution. For this, they will call him Sparrow, or Barbossa, though no consensus forms over which Disney pirate he more faithfully embodies. Some will claim to have gone back with him years, to the American University, where he majored in Comp Lit, or Al-Azhar, where he was studying to be a cleric. One will claim, proudly, to have been cuckolded by him in high school, where he also excelled in handball. And another will claim, just as proudly, to be have been cuckolded by him while studying to be an imam. And another will claim, also proudly, to have been cuckolded by him right there in the Square, in one of the tents. There is never any woman to corroborate these stories, and no one will claim to carry his child, at least not initially. The Islamists will insist he sported a beard and fasted every Friday. The precise length of his beard, and the duration of his fasts will quickly become matters of intense debate among competing camps. The Salafists will describe his beard as long and untrimmed, wild even, a matter of inches, perhaps even red, the marker of divine blessing. Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood will avoid any direct discussion of Mazen’s beard, but will praise it off the record as a signifier of virtue, commitment, and dedication. The Salafists will claim Mazen fasted every Friday from dawn to dusk and that he offered a Khutba more than once, but views differ on the precise subject matter of the Khutba: some will say it was the Sura of the Ants, others will say it was feminine hygiene. The Brothers will claim he only fasted on the first day of the Lunar month, and always deferred to the Supreme Guide on matters of prayer. The Salafists, when faced with this discrepancy, will attribute it to a habit of evasion and omission for which the Brothers are known. Criminals and liars! one of them will mutter to me, before pleading to God for forgiveness. Some will claim to know him by the callus on his forehead, that it was ridged and textured and bore the very name of God. Some will become violently angry at even the suggestion of such a thing. Others will simply laugh and light a Gauloise. No one will be able to tell me how he got there, or what ever became of him. In the video, he will not be heard screaming and it is instantly speculated that he must have been a Deaf Mute. Public opinion will quickly coalesce around this idea. In this telling, Mazen, unable to scream, undistracted from the sound of gunfire and explosions nearby, feels every blow to his face, every fracture in his skull, more sharply and acutely than perhaps you or I would. His pain, in this telling, only adds to his virtue, a virtue on which everybody will immediately stake additional claims. One t-shirt hawker, who has made a small fortune (for him) selling Premier League jerseys to protestors, will attest to having never seen Mazen speak a word during the days, weeks, and months he was on the Square. He will recount a silent exchange whereby Mazen purchased an Arsenal jersey using only hand gestures and signals. Some will say this was sign language, while other deaf protestors (and there are only a handful) will attest to having never met him. Speaking through an interpreter, a Deaf Salafist will ask me What interest is it to you? I will ask him the same in response and, despite my own misgivings, we will nearly come to blows. The slightly larger community of protestors who only fake deafness upon police capture, usually with little success, will also attest to having never seen Mazen before. Within this group, it will be suggested that his gestures were not sign language, but the circumlocutions of somebody with no facility whatsoever for the Arabic language. And it is out of this suggestion, however marginal, that there will begin rampant speculation over who sent him.
Alexandrians will say initially he is one of them, having heard him use the royal we in conversation before being picked up on the Corniche. Some will say they heard him speak Arabic but with an accent or a dialect they could not place: from Algeria, perhaps Tunisia. When asked if they’d ever seen, heard, or encountered anybody from either of these countries before, they will each, to a person, say No. Some will empathically say he spoke Hebrew, that they have pictures of him wearing IDF Blue. Others will emphatically say he spoke Turkish. Some will attribute the confusion to Hebrew sounding an awful lot like Turkish – it doesn’t – while others will suggest that Turkish sounds an awful lot like Farsi – not especially. I will meet a man who will speak of a cousin who worked briefly as a migrant in Spain, who will attest that Catalan sounds an awful lot like Hebrew, Turkish, and Farsi mashed together, but I will quickly realize he is only trying to make conversation, and will otherwise ignore him. In Aswan, they will claim he is from Upper Egypt, in spite of his complexion, or what can be made of it. Others will disagree about even the color of his skin. Some will say he’s Nubian, others Bedouin. Some will say he’s Circassian, or Maltese, or Greek. Because nobody has seen anybody up close from any of these three groups in decades, there will be difficulty getting any confirmation as to what, precisely, is meant by this. You know, my mother’s neighbors were Greek, one woman will be overheard saying on the Metro, but I haven’t seen them leave the house in decades. She will contemplate checking in on them, but will later forget, perhaps out of embarrassment or indifference, mayhap the both. She will not know they died twenty-seven years prior, buried in an unmarked grave at the foot of the Muqattam Hills. Mia Farrow will retweet about Mazen, so will her son; it will be seen by millions of viewers in a handful of western cities. It will soon go viral. Mazen will become an icon embraced globally. Hashtags will proliferate. Few will spell his name right. An army of speculators will descend on Cairo from around the globe, each trying to determine Mazen’s provenance and fate. I will recognize them instantly by their steno pads and their tendency to congregate in odd places: under the overpass by the Hilton, in front of the open sewer fronting the other Hilton, within the city, beyond the Square, milling aimlessly from one awkward diagonal and radial axis to another. They will speak to nobody other than themselves. Soon, locational matters will break down along ethnic lines. The Russians will keep to around the Hilton, the Chinese to the other Hilton. Brazilians will stick to the Marriott in Zamalek. Americans will scope for a place Downtown, where they will quickly grow distracted and decide to stay. Each group will search for traces of Mazen, perhaps a droplet of blood or a strand of hair, anybody who could make a verifiable ID. A personable Russian will offer me a cigarette under the overpass. I will politely decline, ask what interest Mazen is to him, only to be waived off.
Mazen will soon be given many identities, more than any of us can conjure in a lifetime. Urban sociologists will claim he is actually Hassan the Tarantula, a seldom-seen street fighter who long ago took over the slums of Imbaba. Some will dispute this: that Imbaba is actually under the control of a diminutive female, sword-wielding, martial artist named Amina the Blade. Nobody has ever corroborated this for me; I have always wanted it to be true. It will soon turn out I was not alone. Some will wonder if Mazen and Amina are connected, whether strategically or, it is suggested, romantically. A treatment for a soft porn , or what passes for soft porn in Egypt – think adult situations and moderately low necklines – will be written about them, and will be quickly greenlighted for adaptation. Ahmed Ezz and, despite her age, Nadia Elguindy, will be linked to the project and it will screen later that Spring, but only once, during the Eid. Audience members will leave in droves proclaiming, rather anxiously, We brought our daughters to see this! and the film will immediately be removed from every theatre in the country. Bootlegged copies will be circulated, in VHS, as a form of samizdat, among connoisseurs of the “cultural film” genre. The soft porn will later be heavily edited and remarketed as a rom com – or what passes for a rom com in Egypt: no touching and mere innuendo. The crowds still won’t come. It will remain in theatres for months anyways.
At the dinner table, an aunt will ask what I know about Mazen, but between mouthfuls of rice and molokhia, I will demur. She will go on to describe a vast conspiracy, concocted in London, Washington, and Tel Aviv, to divide Egypt into three, with Mazen at the very center of it. I will ask her in what capacity, and she will say Pick one! I will ask her for what purpose, and she will say Finish your rice! Another aunt, busy shelling okra, will call out from the kitchen that Mazen is an agent of the Qataris, but won’t elaborate further. Television commentary will begin to conflate both views, angrily and breathlessly. Mazen’s fate will soon become closely intertwined with whichever camp one identifies with most. For those who believe Mazen was a Deaf Mute, it will be assumed that he is bludgeoned by the police to within an inch of his life beneath the overpass by the Hilton. Within the Deaf Mute Camp – who will come to be known as the Neo-Surdists – views will diverge over what happens beyond this point. All will agree he lives out his days in a vegetative state at the prison hospital in Tura. One school of thought will hold that he is left to die of dehydration. Another will claim that he is accidentally given a lethal dosage of muscle relaxant by an over-eager nurse desperate to make a name for herself, the latest in a series of copycat acts. For those who believe him an agent of the Qataris – Agentists, we will call them – Mazen will take refuge in the U.S. Embassy and never leave it. For those who believe him an agent of Mossad, he will come and go from the Embassy as he pleases, even spend his winters in Dahab. For those who believe he is CIA, he will only leave the Embassy once every afternoon to get his macaron and hot chocolate at the Four Seasons down the street. A waiter there will claim to see him on a semi-regular basis, will say he pays in Euros, tips generously, purports to be Canadian when asked. This claim will soon be attributed to other waiters at other hotels, each establishment’s concierge staff professing zero knowledge of the matter, but encouraging me to pay a visit anyways. For those revolutionaries who believe Mazen their leader, he will remain at large, one day soon to return. The Marxists will say he’s disappeared into the jungle, where he is organizing a guerilla army of peasants and laborers to do final battle with the regime. That Egypt has no jungle to speak of, and little tree cover to offer, will figure little in this telling. The Islamists, now willing to concede that Mazen wasn’t initially theirs’ to begin with, will claim he joined up with them in prison, that he recited the Shahada, permanently swore off liquor, sex, and drugs, and now follows the path of the righteous towards a world of eternal justice and virtue. Some will claim he fled to Libya and was killed by Tuareg mercenaries. Some will claim he winds up in Syria and is killed by ISIS, or one of its antecedents. Some will claim he is hiding in plain sight. Others will claim to have attended his marriage to a niece of the Supreme Guide at a country club whose membership the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated. And others will say he is imprisoned at Tura with the rest of the Brothers. Among the Neo-Surdists and Brothers at Tura, there will be sometimes violent disagreement over whose cellblock he occupies. A disinformation campaign will begin among those Islamists at Tura who view Mazen as a threat, claiming he was actually swept up in one of the bathhouse raids. But nobody, for fear of outing themselves, will take responsibility for this assertion or how they became privy to it. Some will claim he was sentenced to death in absentia. Others will claim to have seen him in court, represented by Amal Clooney. Some Agentists will offer her representation as further proof of a Western conspiracy, and will call for a permanent ban of her husband’s films. A Cairo cinema showing Tomorrowland will be ransacked and torched; there will be no casualties, in part because the theatre will be empty. All sides will agree it is the other’s fault. Not infrequently, these three camps’ views will converge as a matter of social necessity, and it will be agreed, albeit temporarily, that Mazen is a Deaf Mute Marxist-Islamist Agent of Foreign Powers. However, the matter of his death will remain an irreconcilable point of disagreement around which family, social, and business relations will grow strained. Neo-Surdists, who hew closest to this view, will witness their increased marginalization in the ensuing months. Many will leave the country; some will even change their names.
Some critics will argue that Mazen’s very existence was a hoax, that he was either deep cover, an informant, or the desperate illusion of some collective fever dream. One theory will hold that, having survived the attack, he is put through a Stockholm process similar to the Hearst kidnapping, and has been helping the new regime pick off subversive elements in the government and society at large. This theory will initially be espoused by only one individual in the States whose social media presence gives his views far wider reach than they would otherwise merit. But soon it gains traction and becomes gospel. Mazen, it is now argued, personally orchestrated the bathhouse raids and knows who killed Regeni, if he didn’t do it himself. He races to the scene of every church attack, every airplane bombing, weeps among the dismembered limbs and smoldering embers, and vows each time never to fail Egypt again. He bears every burden, absorbs every fault. He is Christ, if you require a Christ, Dajjal, if you even believe in evil, chaos and order, protector and assailant.
Each of these is just a theory, even if I’ve been susceptible to a few of them myself. How, after all, do you get to the truth of a story that no longer wants to be told? A story that denies its own veracity before a single word of it can be uttered? A story that, by its very utterance, impeaches the credibility of any who try to tell it? I wish I knew. I can only offer that the Mazen of each of these tellings does not align with the one I have known: a deeply troubled and ineffectual young man grasping desperately for meaning in his life, one who didn’t die that night, if it were night, but who couldn’t possibly have survived it either. I have held fast to the belief that, as the tear gas flew and the rocks rained down from the rooftops, Mazen not only escaped his captors, he actually killed them with his own bare hands, then he ran. Towards where, I couldn’t tell you, and to what fate is anyone’s guess. Know only that if you were to find him now, he couldn’t remember his own name. If you were to tell him what happened, he wouldn’t believe a word of what you said. And though I still see him, from time to time, he evaporates instantly on double take. It happened at the airport, in fact, as I was recently on my way out of the country, though it is now already in dispute which terminal, and in what role: some say he was mopping a bathroom floor at Domestic Arrivals, while others say he was working an espresso machine near the Alitalia gate. All agree that our eyes didn’t meet, even as I tipped him. Nobody knows that I gave him a good long look anyways, or as long a look as the moment allowed, so at least one of us would always know that it happened, so that I would never have to take anyone else’s word for it, not even his own.
Hani Omar Khalil is an attorney, writer, and photographer living in Brooklyn. A first generation Egyptian-American, he has written extensively about contemporary Egyptian theatre in translation for CultureBot and Baraza, with short fiction appearing in Corium and Epiphany. He received his B.A. in International Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his J.D. from Rutgers Law School.
when baba turns ancestor will he be as he is now, or how he was before quicksand seeped into his brain?
will he be as he is now, yanking at the locked doors of his car, quicksand seeping into it. his brain cursing the woman by his side, the son they made.
yanking at every locked door, will his indignant howls rattle his grandchildren’s grandchildren, pressing them to curse the women by their sides, the sons they make, searing each of their mother-seeking-tongues?
or will the howls of his grandchildren’s grandchildren meet, instead, the benevolent statistician he once was, a generous calculator bias towards each of their mothers. Seeking tongues to conjure his name, will his descendants sing him out of an exile he chose?
buoy
perhaps reaching into memory always, ransacks. you
apocalypse pauses hearing asmahan’s sighs in arabic.
donia salem harhoor is an Egyptian-American interdisciplinary artist. She is Executive Director of The Outlet Dance Project. harhoor is a member of Sakshi Productions and is part of the Brown Girl in the Ring Collective. In 2016, she was an artist-in-residence with Swim Pony. Her poetry has appeared in Sukoon Magazine. She has her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College.
A Dictionary of the Revolution is a series of 125 texts woven from the voices of nearly two hundred people who were asked to define the evolving language of the Egyptian revolution in 2014. The texts were later translated from their original colloquial Egyptian. The digital publication of the Dictionary can be found at http://qamosalthawra.com.
The first time I was harassed, I was in, like, middle school and I was walking home from school. Maybe I was even in elementary school. I went to a policeman: “Someone touched me! I don’t know who!” I sat and cried that day. After that I got scared when I was walking in the street—really scared.
The street became a ridiculously terrifying thing.
Harassment has been around a long time. It’s been around for a long time. Girls walk in the street and boys harass them.
In general, harassment has existed in Egypt for a long time, like, since I was little. I know it, and I see it happening. My mother told me that they used to use pins on the buses, and that was in the seventies.
In general, harassment exists among all human beings: men and women. There are women harassing men and men harassing women. Basically all human beings, all around the world.
In our community, harassment has different names and terms. There’s harassment that’s sexual harassment, there’s leering, and there’s verbal harassment.
Many years ago, or some years ago, before it was a common expression and used often, harassment meant touching: a person touching a girl’s body. But then the concept evolved, so that just a look, just a word, just the catcall that we have been accustomed to all our lives, for a long, long time—the normal catcall that we always hear in the streets—that’s harassment. I see that as having entered into the realm of harassment.
And there’s also another kind of harassment that nobody talks about at all: women harassing men and boys in public buses. It’s pretty insignificant and we’ve decided to focus on boys harassing girls, but it exists.
Like, we have several kinds. But in Egypt it’s everywhere because we have so much ignorance.
Harassment indicates to me how much people… how much we have a problem as a people, like, as a country.
As I see it, this word should be removed from the law. Harassment: no, don’t mention it. If a girl doesn’t want someone to harass her, she knows how to make sure no one harasses her. I, myself, if I were a girl wearing respectable clothes and acting in a respectable way, no one would ever come near me. Let the father have a look at his daughter or his wife before she goes out; let him tell her whether someone is going to look at her or not. So that girls don’t blame the men! Don’t blame me if I’m walking and I find a woman—I mean sorry and all—a woman wearing something that says to you, “Harass me.”
Do I really know what it feels like to be a girl living in Egypt? There was a time in my life when I was scared of people—I had a kind of terror, like a fear or a phobia, of dealing directly with people. But I grew up. One’s character grows into the world, breaks in, wakes up, and that sort of thing, so ok. That became a memory for me. But the feeling that people up till now… I mean, for a girl to live, pretty much every day, with something like that… Without a doubt, that fear is hidden, and yet inside you there is something frightened, something anxious.
If a girl gets harassed, why is she afraid to go and say that she was harassed, or why is she reluctant to say so? Because her father will blame her; her mother will blame her; the people around her will blame her. “No, it’s your fault because of your clothes.” — “It’s your fault because you were walking the wrong way; you act wrong in the street. You don’t walk the right way. You don’t look straight ahead and head where you’re going.” All of that is blaming her, so she’ll endure the harassment and stay silent. Then, there are girls for whom that turns into a psychological thing, like, “I’m afraid.” Inside, it turns into fear and lack of security, and when she’s walking in the street she’s terrified.
It’s an obscene level of violence. There’s a true exclusion. You plant a seed of real terror in the person in front of you. It’s like, for instance, a person who experiences a kind of torture; a man who is sexually tortured at a precinct, something like that. Something inside you breaks. Maybe he’s physically ok, but inside he is… destroyed. You’re not hurting a person on the level of the body: beating him, breaking his bones, so that ultimately he can go recover and get well. No, you hurt him psychologically, and then the person has no trust at all in anything after that. It’s difficult for him to return to the state he was in before something like that happened to him. And ninety percent, or more than ninety percent of girls have experienced something like that. Because of that, we… the psychology of girls isn’t in the best state. Because of that, three-quarters, or like, the majority of girls are terrified. They are in a state of fear. Justified fear, of course.
You are doing an injustice, an injustice to boys, I swear to God! There are a lot of girls who harass boys. Not me specifically, I’m talking about a general category.
There was a well-known incident in the nineties—an incident of rape in Attaba Square in a bus, in a crowd, in the midst of people. In the nineties, they used to say that it was an isolated incident—that there was a direct relationship between the victim and the perpetrator, that he was her fiancée and I don’t know what else, and she broke the engagement so he wanted to hurt her. But at the time, I thought maybe there wasn’t a relationship between them at all, and that the media or society tried to fabricate a relationship, to change it from a public issue to a private issue.
You’ve got harassment, and you’ve got mob attacks, and you’ve got rape… and you’re still debating about whether it’s happening or it isn’t happening? And you’re still saying that you can’t say that a woman was raped, and that it was an incident of harassment?
Harassment really existed, but people weren’t talking about it much. So what happened is that people started talking about it a lot, and that’s something. It’s a step towards our being able to remedy a problem like that.
A while ago, before the revolution, people would confront the boys and hold them back: “Don’t do that sort of thing, it’s shameful,” and I don’t know what else. You were able to get your rights. Now, it’s widespread, and people stay silent and no one talks about it. And even when you catch a harasser, they lead you away from him and say, “Just leave him alone, don’t take him to the precinct,” and stuff like that. The role of the police isn’t strong anymore. So, if I go to the police, or if I go to people and say to them, “I want to go to the police because of what happened,” they’ll say to me, “There are more important things.” They don’t have time for things like that, and they won’t do anything.
The time I felt the most safe from harassment was in the days of the sit-ins. I felt like the men and the youth were making a wall around the women, so that they’d be able to comfortably move around and at the same time no one would bother them, no one disreputable would harass them. They really respected the girl, they really respected the woman, like, she’s a cut above the rest and they have to protect her. If a woman passed, they’d make room for her. Of course, that’s something we don’t see in the street.
There were groups of youth with a purpose who went out at the beginning of the revolution, both young men and young women. All of them were youth, under the banner of youth. There wasn’t a big distinction between girl and boy, and everyone knew their role. The girl knew her role in the tents, in medical relief, in securing the entrances. There was an integration of roles. And girls chanted like boys; there was no difference. Girls got killed like boys; there was no difference. There was sublimity. A spiritual and moral sublimity for the purpose that you’re working on: a state in which justice prevails, free of discrimination; freedom, equality; and all of those beautiful, noble values that the youth dreamed of.
In the eighteen days, there was no one harassing, and young men sat with girls and everything was just perfect. Everyone was respectful.
Why wasn’t there any harassment in Tahrir Square in the time of the revolution? Because we dealt with girls who were with us in the Square as our sisters. No, not as our sisters—as our brothers.
When, after the revolution, they wanted people to go back home again, and for no one to come back to the Square and that kind of thing, they intentionally sent people out to harass the girls, so the girl would be scared for herself and not go out. And that was an intentional thing.
Harassment is an old Egyptian thing and all that, but at times it’s a tactic for something political. Like, for example, in the 2010 elections, when for the first time… on the first day, when girls went out to the elections, they ended up beaten by men and there was a huge issue. How can men go out and beat up girls and tear off their clothes and harass them? No big deal. It happened in a lot of situations: in the time of, what do you call it, SCAF, Mohamed Mahmoud… and it happened in the time of the Muslim Brotherhood. It became a thing you can regularly use. It’s part of our nature as Egyptians.
To be accurate, it was a game they played with the people, so that they could trick people. They’d say, “People went out and harassed girls.” I mean, it didn’t have to be girls, they could harass anyone: a little kid. In any case, they wanted to ruin the day for people. They wanted to spoil their happiness.
How much the Square changed. How much the place where I lived and experienced all these positive things—community, people, bravery, fear… Suddenly, the Square became a frightening place, an upsetting place. And suddenly it was… I mean, harassment is like a tear gas bomb. It’s a thing used to frighten us, to stop us, to tear us apart. I mean, before that when a tear gas bomb was fired, we would all run—man, woman, child, Sheikh, Christian, whatever. We would all run. Now it was you, just you, because you have tits and ass and hair, because you have a vagina, just that. That violence is against you alone.
Harassment was happening to the point that a soldier who was standing and protecting the demonstration, or guarding the Square or whatever… if a girl passed him, he would catcall her.
The Square itself was different. I was anxious and uncomfortable, the total opposite of all the nice things I loved in the Square. I couldn’t feel any of it. And I hate that that is the last memory I have of the Square. Now it’s become something like, like… you know when you eat some really nice food, and the last bite is something really bad?
The idea of big gatherings: harassment was something essential happening in them. There was a very well known incident that happened outside the cinema on Eid, before the revolution by a year or two. That was always happening in big gatherings.
After Amr Mostafa and Talaat Zakaria and those people started saying that the kids in Tahrir Square were having sex, the kids that are… the ones who’re called what now, sees kids, sarsageya kids, shaneeba kids… they went and were like, “Yeah, there’s harassment and everyone’s ok with it.” Basically, they’re already sexually frustrated because of this country, because of what’s happening in this country, or whatever, from El Sobky or whoever’s in those films that they’re releasing, those dirty films they’re making. Those guys are sexually frustrated, so they go out and say, “We’re going to Tahrir Square where there’s harassment, and we’re gonna go to places where there are crowds and harass, and no one will say anything to us.”
There’s a difference between the protests that were happening and the ones that are happening now. The difference is that most of the groups that are going out now are summoned. They’re summoned through television, or by felool [remnants of the old regime], through loudspeakers that pass through the streets, making people feel like there are carnivals happening in Tahrir. And that, for sure, makes the whole thing lack gravity. It gives it more of a sense of celebration. The girl who’s going now is going to party, so she’s concerned with her clothes, concerned with her appearance, concerned with her whole look. If we recognize that harassment is already present in the culture of Egyptians, in general… it’s a virus. It enters a place like that, where the girl is dancing like it’s the end of… like they are unveiled dancers, and the progression is normal, for sure. It’s easy for him to start harassing with his tongue, and then to harass by his proximity, and then to harass with his hand, and then to harass by his gaze. The harassment comes from the absence, in the protests… from the lack of gravity of the situation.
Do they imagine that the Square is an entity outside of Egypt, where strange creatures gather who have nothing to do with anything? That there are bohemian people going out to the Square, doing bad things, so anyone who goes there should endure? Endure harassment, endure beating, endure murder, endure anything? And that’s what people were saying: “Why did she go there?” She should endure. — “Why did she go to the Square?” She should endure the harassment that happens to her. — “What brought him there?” He should endure being shot with a gun. — “Why did he go there?” He should endure being arrested, and beaten, and tortured.
Any issue that comes up in our society now, we deal with it all wrong. The problem of harassment is like the drug problem, like any problem in our community—we approach it badly. Even the media deals with it all wrong.
For example, there was an incident: the situation where the girl was beaten at the Council of Ministers sit-in. Putting aside the situation itself, the justifications that were given, the words that were pronounced, the way the situation was dealt with was really bad. Even the sheikhs came out, the ones who are supposedly religious men—at the time, they put aside the very fact that the girl was beaten and said, “What brought her there? Why was she there in the first place? And what was she wearing?” and I don’t know what else. Obviously, they dealt with the situation in a very erroneous way. You’re in a society with a level of ignorance that’s not negligible, so when people start saying something like that—“Why did the girl go there?”—it’s a justification. That way you’re… it’s like you’re encouraging that something like that will happen!
There has to be honesty. Honesty. Is this problem really because the girl’s wearing whatever, or is the reason that the boy wasn’t raised well, or is the reason that the two of them are both contributing?
From my perspective, harassment isn’t shameful for the boy or shameful for the girl. Basically, it’s that I’m sitting around unemployed! What do you expect me to do? I’m either gonna steal, or I’m gonna embezzle, or I’ll drink, or I’ll harass, or I’ll disturb all of God’s creation.
The idea is that the revolution brings about change—change in the conditions of the youth. They will have interests, they will have work, they will work and there will be… they won’t be unemployed. They will have hope that they can get married. It won’t be that the young man knows that there is no hope for him to marry, or to make a family, or to do anything with his life, so he harasses! No… the idea is that there must be a revolution… a revolution. Like we said at the beginning: bread, freedom, social justice. When those things exist and are realized, we won’t see these things, these things that are happening. There won’t be harassment.
“The young men are unwell.” — “The young men are unwell.” That’s always what we hear every time, and we never hear anything else. And the girls are always blamed.
I see that the absence of law plays a role. That’s one of the reasons for harassment. Because the law says that you have to bring two witnesses, and so on. That means that if someone harasses a girl when he’s walking alone in the street with her, it’s alright—there’s no problem at all. Of course, the absence of security. Certainly all that exists right now is just a show and nothing more.
There is no straightforward law that criminalizes harassment. There might be… I understand there is a law that could be used, or a fragment of legislation, a binding fragment… but unfortunately, from what I understood from talking with a lawyer, it isn’t enforced.
The harasser: who is he exactly anyway? He’s a moronic guy, empty, maybe sitting around bored with his friends. He’s someone who forces his power on you, or his strength on you. What does that mean? Like, what kind of girl are you going to harass? A girl who’s afraid of you; a girl who’s doing something that puts her in a weak position. I mean, if a girl is wearing something short, if she’s doing something that differs from what the rest of society is doing, the society itself looks at her as ridiculous. So he thinks of her as in a position lower than him.
Harassment won’t end in Egypt, in my opinion, until there are men, and those men have machismo and are real men. And it won’t necessarily be that as long as she’s someone I don’t know, that I’m not related to, I’m allowed to look at her or touch her.
Look man, now there isn’t even that bit that says I listen to my dad because he’s my dad. I mean, they’re cursing their dads, they curse their moms. No one is close to God, especially when their mom and dad aren’t. When the dad doesn’t know God and he doesn’t pray the mandatory prayers, and he’s just sitting at the coffee shop playing with this guy, talking to that guy, and hanging with this girl—look and see how the kid’s gonna turn out! Of course he’ll turn out like his dad.
Of course, morals aren’t just for boys; they’re for boys and girls. I mean, you see trashy clothes now, you see things you wouldn’t believe, for real! I mean, you… I swear to God I’m repulsed by what I see around. Real trash, but God help them, God help the boys and their families, all of them, bring them closer to Him. I imagine if those boys started to notice God, I swear to God they’d be afraid to do anything like that. They’d shy away from it. God help us and help them.
People understood freedom wrong. There’s a hair’s breadth… a hair’s breadth between freedom, and filth and boorishness. I want people to understand that. Like for instance there’s a girl who says, “It’s personal freedom for me to wearing leggings and a t-shirt,” and the t-shirt is practically above her belly button. This was someone who was essentially walking around respectably, afraid that someone would talk about her. But after the revolution, freedom got understood completely wrong. And by the way, that’s where harassment comes from. That’s why it has increased.
We’re supposed to live free in this country and wear what we want! It shouldn’t be that I walk in the street wearing something long and I’m afraid, or wearing something short and I’m still afraid—wearing a headscarf and I’m afraid, without a headscarf and I’m afraid. That way, it’s just better if I stay home. I’d prefer to just stay home. And I won’t go to a protest, and I won’t demand my rights, in order to avoid the guys that are harassing me. We demand that we walk in the street freely, just like the guys who got their freedom in the street. We want to get our freedom, too. We’ll wear what we want, we’ll walk where we want, and the guys will take care of us. Because we’re in a country that is supposedly a democracy.
All of this, to me, means one thing: that what is happening now, everything is because of something called a State, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that there are people living with psychological damage that will take them ten years to recover from. So, I—with the terms, with the words, with the personal relationship to matters, and the public relationships to them—I’m unable to understand how there is a relationship between that and whether or not there is a State.
We have to know that harassment is a phenomenon related to all the problems in our society. It’s related to our upbringing, it’s related to economic conditions, it’s related to social conditions, it’s related to the educational system that we have—it’s related to everything. The phenomenon of harassment is like every other ugly phenomenon in Egyptian society, in that we cannot separate it from other issues. Let’s not talk not about who’s the reason for harassment, the girl or the boy. Let’s talk about it as part of the issues we have altogether, which cannot be separated.
Recently, they made a law, I’m not sure… harassment laws. That’s something really great. But I want us as a community to reach the point of progress where I myself don’t make these mistakes. Of course, we aren’t in heaven, we’re on Earth and all that, but we want to get to that point, where we ourselves don’t do it. You get it?
Amira Hanafi is a writer and artist who assembles multivocal collections of material connected to particular histories. She presents compositions from her research as digital and print publications, performances, and installations, most often working in multiple media within each project. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at Spazju Kreattiv in Valetta, Malta, at The Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture in Portugal, and at Flux Factory in Queens, New York. Her texts have appeared in Index on Censorship, Ibraaz, American Letters & Commentary, Matrix, Makhzin, and Fence, among others. She is the author of Forgery (Green Lantern Press, 2011), Minced English (print-on-demand, 2010), and a number of limited edition artist’s books. Her work has been supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, commissioned by Rhizome, and awarded with the Artraker Award for Changing the Narrative in 2017. Born in the US, Hanafi has lived and worked in Cairo since 2010.
I abhor the sound of my parents clashing their metal tongues
you son of 60 dogs you whore
ya kelb ya waesich 3an abu shaklak
the language of wedding band inscriptions hurled across the dinner table
a circus act of shabashib aimed at my head
slice up my tongue but leave my fingers
knives storming my bowels like Napoleon’s cavalry after a trip to Egypt
running me mummy brown after too many khodar too much salata baladi or just a sip of tap water
like I’m not legit enough to hang with baladi intestinal flora
not baladi enough
so Baladi cuts me up
with her uncooked food and rawness
with her diverted water and hydroelectric power
I abhor the sound of knives sharpening memories
slice up my tongue
bass sibou sawaab3ey
Hair Ties
1.
The day my hair tie broke I yelled, “fuck!” and cracked a wry smile at the student evaluation that read “unprofessional”
I couldn’t contain myself
I paid five cents for it but breaking it cost me my dignity
I couldn’t contain myself
2.
The day my hair tie broke my infant grabbed a fistful of stray curls tiny vice grip fingers holding fast to her roots
3./.٣
The day my hair tie broke the police pulled me over I wondered if I’d get taken in I wondered if I’d get taken out
.٤/4.
The day my hair tie broke I heard my mother’s voice beat a frantic rhythm inside my skull “Limmi sha3rik, ya bint!”
but felt sexy again for a second
.٥
The day my hair tie broke I thought to myself, “Ana hummara” as my locks scrambled to swat their gnat-like calls of “ya sharbat, ya amar” from my ears
I failed to lick clean the unsavory clicks on teeth accidental presses in Khan el Khalili passageways
6.
The day my hair tie broke their dirty blonde mouths yelled, “Brown Sugar” and craved a taste
7./.٧
because this body unleashed is a threat a liability to itself
Hair Brush
When my iron coils broke half your teeth I made sure to leave you
extra baksheesh O Cairo cab driver on the Autobahn
I know how much you miss your crooked streets
Favorite Chair
The Carpenter wanted a daughter gamda, qawwaya like herself with the thick skin of an oak under her polished surface
a daughter solid and strong enough to fell a tree in her hands and craft from its wood
a chair upon which Madame could rest her back after a hard day’s work
The Carpenter’s favorite chairs adorned Victorian salons plump and dainty thighs boasting coy question marks over their curled toes
Madame planted a tree fancying apples of rosy flesh smooth and crisp falling not too far from her own
but Madame got a Willow laden with silty water Madame didn’t know that every time her head throbbed The Willow would too and pare her skin that every time Madame sought shelter from the Cairene sun that stalked her The Willow would uproot herself bent under the weight of her cascading tendrils to offer Madame her shade
But Madame had little use for idling beneath cool, weeping leaves
and chopped The Willow down
with a butcher’s precision for limbs and choice cuts rubbed the wood clean with 50 grit embalmed it with varnish
but was surprised that when she rested her burdens against The Willow’s bones
she drowned The Chair in stagnant tears
sap gathering at the corners of her splintered eyes
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Born in Hamburg to parents from Cairo, Dina El Dessouky immigrated to the United States at age three. Dina teaches writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she completed her doctorate in Literature. Her work appears in Mizna, Spiral Orb, and Min Fami: Arab Feminist Reflections on Identity, Space, and Resistance (Inanna Publications, 2014). She is an Alum of VONA/Voices, The Quest Writer’s Conference, and Las Dos Brujas Writers’ Workshops, and has served as a resident writer in the Santa Cruz Recycled Art Program. She is currently at work on her first collection of poems.
If there’s an equivalent for black sheep in arabic i don’t know it whoever You are i carry You like the moon carries the months i don’t want to let You down and You wouldn’t imagine me lost between calendars and a goofy tide
a ram and the sun play hot potato with my liver, the sun makes to catch it, the galaxy quivers and my liver dries up making it to her arms never. they sell it to a food truck You eat me drenched in tahina on soft french bread
i wrote this poem seven times in stops, 3 times fast 4 times slow traced with red skin your calligraphy, your cursive bones too big to curse You with but the meaning of a kid whose word is only love really.
this is the part where i can still be You, but I couldn’t wrap my head around a peach, my jaw chews the pit clicking kho kho khokh and you’re veiled rolling eyes at a tongue that calls anything but mama
there is only one word in your mouth, and You feign others to get by we aren’t so different then, there is an off-yellow-sickly prickly pear You swallow every summer seed to flesh ratio phenomenal pebbles find the hollows of your teeth hopeful for what might blossom
maybe you’d think i was silly and want to know too much when there’s god so how can we be lost inside our own skin the ram thinks me redeemable she etches into my side a sun tattoo, rings of words I can’t read on my own
as i watch mute
there’s an equivalent for black sheep in arabic
and i’m sure i don’t know it
Nour Kamel is perfectly lit and writes things in Cairo, Egypt. Kamel works as a writer and editor, is a Winter Tangerine workshop alumnus and advisor, and has a degree in American and English literature from the University of East Anglia with a year abroad at the University of Mississippi. Kamel writes about identity, language, sexuality, queerness, gender, oppression, femininity, trauma, family, lineage, globalisation, loss and food.
The water hit the spoon’s surface and splashed all over her. Her blouse, pants and the floor got wet. Soraya blamed Umm-Kulthum’s beautiful voice for the distraction. She was keen on finishing the dishes while listening to the eight o’clock classical Arabic music radio program before the miss woke up. The miss had commented before to her that those songs encouraged women to be obsessed about love. And then she rambled and said big words such as; independence, empowerment and the type of words you hear from politicians. Soraya found solace in Umm Kalthum’s songs, what mattered more than love anyway? If it wasn’t for Umm Kalthum’s voice, she wouldn’t have had a song that reminded her of her walks with her mother to the bakery for fresh bread straight out of the oven. They would then fill it with home made chips, shared a bottle of coke, sat on the street benches overlooking the Nile and devoured their feast. This must be her favorite memory of time spent with her mother. Neither would she have had a song that reminded her of the first time Mohsen held her hand when they were strolling in the Azhar park and he confessed his love to her. Those songs kept her company and at times her peace. This was Soraya’s first job in the city. After her mother became sick, her family moved to the city in hopes of finding better medical treatments, and Soraya had begun to work to help her family out. Soon her mother died. And her father health conditions quickly deteriorated and could no longer go to work regularly. That is what happens to someone when love is gone, Soraya believed. She quickly found herself barely seventeen and the main source of income in the household. She had to drop out of her last year in school to accommodate the new working hours. Back then she made a vow to herself, that once things began to settle she would go back to school. Now it had been two years already and nothing changed. When she had first arrived at Amal’s house she was wearing one of her favorite mother’s long sleeve dresses; Amal then gave her a long inquisitive look, left her for few minutes without explanation, came in, handed her a couple of old pants and blouses and asked her to wear them instead. She told her that she would not tolerate looking at those ugly dresses. They reminded her of the poor women who worked in the field. She meant the peasants of course. It was not absolutely horrible to work for this bachelorette; at least during day-time she had to clean after one person only. “Important people visit me. So you should look presentable,” Amal would say every time she gave her clothes. She was not used to wearing pants it made her feel conscious. Yet she politely accepted them from her and wrapped a jacket around her waist to cover her back. Her body looked slim in those tight clothes. She couldn’t begin to think what her mother would say had she seen her walk like this in the village. Maybe Mohsen would like it, or maybe not, she could not tell. But mother, she wouldn’t. She sized the mess she had caused, and quickly searched for a piece of cloth to dry the sink and the wet floor. “What was that?” Amal asked coming out of her room and yawning. “Nothing,” Soraya replied as she dried the last wet spot on the floor, “Nothing to worry about Miss.” Amal came into the living room that was an extension to the open kitchen. She leaned on the kitchen’s counter for a minute. The next minute she stretched on the ground in awkward poses. She wore pink sweatpants and a white tank top. And her hair curled in rollers. She looked past Soraya and gestured with her hands, pretending she had a cup she was about to sip from. Soraya’s stomach churned whenever Amal did that, why couldn’t she just ask. “Right away,” she mumbled. Soraya rushed to fix her some coffee. She could now finally perfect American coffee. Before Amal showed her how to, she could only make regular Turkish coffee. Soraya memorized by heart how the scene played out every single day. It was a Friday morning, that meant that the miss woke up late and didn’t have to work. And like every weekend she woke up with what looked like a bad headache, and then asked for her coffee fix while staring at her cellphone. She’d then cover herself with the blanket she kept at the reception’s couch, cuddle her cat, Sonfera, and watch TV till noon. By that time of the day; Soraya would have already finished cleaning the kitchen, swept the floors of the living room and the reception, and started off with the window cleaning. During the week the miss worked in one of the prestigious companies. Soraya looked at her while waiting for the coffee to boil. She had the perfect teeth. The perfect skin. Silky hair that was now rolled, golden at the ends and brown at the roots. She looked like a goddess. Probably that’s what money does to people. “Tell me Soraya, do you love this Mohsen of yours?” Soraya bit her lower lips. She didn’t remember why she had ever mentioned Mohsen to her. “Yes.” “When are you getting married then?” “When God makes a way.” “God? That must be a hard relationship.” Amal rolled her eyes and ate a piece of chocolate. “Is he one of those traditional men who don’t allow their wives to work?” Soraya sighed, “We haven’t talked about that yet.” “Talked about it? This is not an option! Who will clean for me? You have to arrange for a substitute if that’ll be the case.” “Miss, not to worry.” “I worry Soraya. I worry a lot. I have so much on my plate and an unclean house is the last thing I need,” She said as she waved Sonfera away. So many thoughts passed through Soraya’s mind, but nothing that she could say out loud. “Tell me, is he good looking? Are you attracted to him?” Soraya blushed for she was not accustomed to think in that way, let alone discuss such a private affair in an open manner. “Yes?” “I’d like to think he is handsome.” “Poor girl, your face is red!” Amal laughed. “Anyways, I’m travelling tonight for two weeks. I ‘ll leave you the keys; make sure you come at the end of the second week, right before I arrive, to dust off the house.” At around four’ o’clock Soraya was done cleaning the house, and headed home. On her way back she stopped by Marefa public school to pick up her brothers; Omar, Ahmed, Wafik, and Hussein. She was older than the eldest, Omar, by nine years. She glimpsed Hussein first, the youngest, running towards her. She hugged him, then held his hand and waited for the rest of the boys. And then they walked back together to their house, a small flat on top of the roof overlooking the busy streets of Shubra. When they arrived home she could see from the window that her father didn’t change his position since she left him in the morning. She could hardly recognize him these days with his frail figure and large dark circles under his eyes. When her mother was alive, he used to be different but the years seemed to have smoothed his rough edges and soothed her grudges. There he was slouched on the couch, surrounded by half empty cups of tea, watching an Egyptian soap opera episode. “Hello father, how was your day?” “Good Soso, this was once Egypt. I wanted to be part of those times,” he said referring to the soap opera he watched over ten times this past year, featuring Abd el Halim’s life. “Its seems like it was a good era. Are you hungry?” “Of course it was. Yes, and make something for the kids.” She let out a long sigh and went to prepare dinner. The kitchenette was made up of a small fridge, one that the miss got rid of last year as she was refurbishing her kitchen and wanted a new one that would blend in with the new design, a vintage stove, and a sink. She fetched the peas she had shelled out the night before. And made a meal of rice and peas in red sauce and served the men. Finally, after a long day she went to her room. The only private room in the house, everything else they shared. Other than Mondays she worked all week long, and on Mondays she helped her brothers in their school work. Back when she was at school, she spent her free time with one of her girlfriends or engulfed in a book of her choice. She could hardly grasp that the next day she had the whole day to herself. She woke up as usual at five o’clock in the morning. She did not set up the alarm the night before. Her mother once explained to her, that our bodies have their own way of adapting to habits. It was one of those silly little things that people come to know alone, that her mother talked about the most. Her dad liked to tease her mother that if she had finished her education she would have had better things to talk about. But somehow those were the things she missed the most things like; “Don’t shower before you go to bed or you’ll catch a cold.” and “Eat some real food.”. Where would she have been if it weren’t for her? She missed her. She kept trying to fall back to sleep but she couldn’t. She thought of the things she could do today for a change. She could prepare breakfast for her fiancé in the warehouse and spend time with him. Her stomach cramped. Perhaps she should rest for a while at home, but she wouldn’t really be alone. Her father would be there. She decided that she would walk the boys to school first. So she left the bed and opened her cupboard, several beautiful dresses hanged next to each other. Today was a good day to wear one. But instead she grabbed one of the three outfits she had made out of the items Amal gave her. And headed to the bathroom. And mechanically undressed, took a shower and wore her uniform. “Good morning boys, wake up! You are going to be late to school.” Shortly after she dropped them, she took the microbus to downtown. She did not think too much about it, her feet seemed to take the lead. She arrived at building number nineteen like every morning at eight o’clock. Only this morning, she was not supposed to be there. The apartment was one of the high ceilinged ones. Amal had explained to Soraya that unlike the new areas of Cairo, downtown buildings were built during the British occupation, and their architecture mimicked the European style. The apartment belonged to her grandfather, and now that her family lived in Dubai, it was hers. She tried the keys to the apartment. It was as clean as she left it the day before. She was hesitant at first. But she entered anyway. A rush of excitement travelled all through her body. The house was empty. And she was alone. She didn’t know what to do with herself so she moved to the kitchen and boiled water for coffee. She then went inside Amal’s room; and at the inviting sight of the king-size bed she threw her full weight onto it. She stayed silent for a while. A few minutes later, she went into the bathroom attached to the master bedroom. And undressed. Then she moved to the tub, and opened the tap. She started preparing a bubble bath the same way she did for the miss. Only she could not choose from the range of the liquid soap available. So she poured a bit of each flavor. It smelled like a garden of flowers she thought. Then she immersed in the water. It could have been an hour or more before she came out, she could not tell. She enjoyed the warmth of the water and the smell of vanilla and peach that surrounded her. After the bath she felt a little bit more comfortable. This feels right she thought. She then chose one of the fur pink pajamas-she’d always wondered how they must feel on one’s skin. To be covered by something so soft. Then she lounged on the sofa and watched the television for hours while snacking on nuts. She sort of forgot the day’s hour, who she was or where she had been. Only that she wanted to stay like this for a good while. A door slammed. She jerked from her seat. She stood fixed in her place, with a startled look in her eyes. And before she could think, a man appeared. Tall, he occupied so much space. He was too big, and she was too small. He had dark brown hair and thick eyebrows. And hazel eyes that gazed at her. She could not make her mouth move. She attempted to say something, but something similar to a squeak came out. It occurred to her that he too looked like he was out of words. “Hey..I’m Mourad, Amal’s brother,” He said in a plain calm voice. Something about his voice, calmed her down, more calming then vanilla and peach. Still she did not know what to say. How would she explain why she was there? In his sister’s pajamas? He interrupted the silence “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you. Amal said she was travelling and I could use the house during my visit.” “Sorry, I talk too fast! You must be Amal’s friend?” his voice cracked. Was that nervousness she heard in his voice? She suddenly realized he had no idea who she was. She breathed. Soraya nodded, “Yes, but I was just about to leave.” “No please you don’t have to.” “No really, I was spending the night over and was going to leave anyway.” “I hope I didn’t intrude, care for some coffee before you leave?” She mechanically followed him to the kitchen. The idea of being in a closed space with a man alone, was perhaps a normal idea in Amal’s world, and probably in her brother’s world too. But for Soraya it was the most foreign. She thought of the other night with Mohsen though. She tried to refocus on the enormity of her immediate situation instead. But the memory of Mohsen and the staircase came to her mind. She reached for the coffee jar. “Let me take care of that,” he said as he took the coffee jar from her. “What is your name?” “Nesma.” She came up with that rather quickly, she thought. It had been a long day for both of them. They had had a fight about postponing their wedding, because Mohsen was not financially ready for all the preparations. And it was late so he walked her home. “Milk?” Amal’s brother asked with a charming smile. “Yes, please,” She said shyly. They had arrived and Soraya turned to tell him goodbye. But he insisted to walk her upstairs. She did not object. “Sugar?” the brother’s voice interrupted her thoughts. But her mind wondered again to that night. As she took the stairs she felt Mohsen’s breath at the back of her ears. He was close. And he came closer from behind and tenderly pulled her towards him by her waist. Her heart pace quickened. She lost her breath, and gulped back the tears. She wanted to let go and give in. She wanted to feel the heaviness of his body against hers. Allow herself to feel defeated, penetrated. And for once embrace her femininity without fighting back. “Would you like sugar?” he repeated, “Are you okay?” “No, I mean yes. I mean no about the sugar and yes I am okay.” “I am a firm believer, that the best coffee is Turkish coffee,” He said with a smile. “Me too,” she replied spontaneously. And she had loved him for a long time hadn’t she. But despite herself her legs tightened next to each other. And as if possessed by a foreign force, she pushed him away. And started to weep. “Are you always so brief in your replies or did I scare you?” he asked. He was gorgeous just like his sister. Irresistible, she thought. “No, not at all. I am just shy at first.” He laughed, and swiped his dark hair backwards. “Do you live nearby?” he asked so gently. “Half an hour away,” she replied. She moved her long hair from one side to the other. “I can give you a ride.” “I prefer to walk.” “Me too, it always helps me calm down especially after an exhausting day. Helps me breathe some fresh air, and sort out my messy thoughts. Plus, it’s a good exercise nowadays in a city like Cairo, we don’t get to walk that often,” He said, “I am rambling. Sorry.” She laughed, “No you are okay, you speak your mind.” “Is that a good thing?” “Yes. I enjoy walking too; I sometimes get myself lost on purpose to discover new places.” “You are adventurous, I see.” He poured the coffee in a cup and handed it to her and said, “I do that in reading, I try to get lost in the books I read, and imagine what it would feel like to live in a different world-the story world.” “One can only imagine such things,” she said. “Would you like to go for a walk Nesma?” he asked. “Yes. That would be lovely,” she answered.
Rana Soliman an Egyptian writer who believes in the power of words, and loves to experiment with different narrative modes. Being a hybrid of both the east and west, she writes stories from that culturally conflicted viewpoint. Rana is a financial analyst during the day and a part-time student in the Masters of Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh.
You’re a teacher tying knots on a sailboat, reluctant to let go and I mistake the fisherman’s uniform. I’m not here for the belly dancers, I’m here for another funeral, to see kites wading in the clouds, children pulling at the sky to come closer, I need a sock, thread, and one balloon because my uncle told me about this one trick.
II
Borders are not like fences, they keep people in, you taught me to flash my passport like I belong everywhere, to be restless, I don’t think land meant to hurt its people, all you did was grow tall buildings and place glass windows in every classroom.
III
From where we stood, the women sang beautifully in unison to the duffs the stars showed themselves after the wedding concluded where men held my hands, praised the groom and my tongue, and asked me to come from behind the camera.
IV
Someone told me you mean something in Arabic, tell me, if cliffs could stop the waves from crashing, would you ask them to?
V
Your Guadua looks like Qasib grew to adulthood, thick, sweet, grounded. The trees need more than sun and water, and the three men you let me photograph, one looked Arab, the other African, and the third could have been me. I spoke gringo, they spoke the language of the colonizers and the translator understood it takes more than beauty to stay anchored.
VI
The citadels, cathedrals, mosques, you look older than film, but not antiquity. Everyone talks about you, even the enemy, a silhouette of satellites occupy the rooftops near stiffened flags above dazzling asphalt, you remind me of someone, maps are not printed memories the cab driver keeps asking me for directions, and I keep pointing towards a home that isn’t in sight.
More Sweets
With a dated voice he asked Are you Ikhwani or Salafi? He continued his tea, You know what we need? America to drop one bomb on all of us. I smiled awkwardly, looked at his wife then him. He placed his cup in the tray rested into his chair. His wife turned towards me Would you like more sweets?
Fourth Grade
The General told me to guard the armory and handed me a broomstick so what if I told you this before مافيش حاجة اسمة allowance here, take four quarters buy a two liter on your way home يابني did I tell you about the neighbor’s dog on the roof it barked as if it hated me and every time it barked it came closer to the ledge and one day listen, so what hear it again when your grandfather spoke I kept my mouth shut.
Belal Mobarak was born in Alexandria, Egypt. Raised in Queens. He is a poet, artist, and the son of a great storyteller. Writing is how he learned to finish his stories and poetry is how he learned to tell them with the least amount of words possible. Belal recently traveled across the United States sharing his stories for The Moth Mainstage. A finalist in Brutal Nation’s 2017 Competition for Writers of Color. You can find his work published in Columbia Poetry Review, Newtown Literary, Blueshift Journal, Flock, Apogee, HEart, and others. He currently works for Higher Education in New York City. You may find more of his work at Belalmobarak.com/poetry.
Tamima’s driver parked the SUV by the Civil Status Authority in Abasiyya and rushed to her side to open the door. She stepped out sheepishly, cursing him under her breath for drawing attention to her. Osama, the guy in charge of whisking her through all the red tape and ordinary people was waiting on the sidewalk, his face baring a huge obligatory smile. The sidewalk was already buzzing with activity. Street sellers sat cross-legged on the bare ground, picking lice out of children’s hair, chitchatting, and selling everything from vegetables and tissue boxes, to biscuits and Taiwanese toys. “Happy New Year!” they hurled, as the Madame came out of the fancy car. “LE 6 the tomatoes!” “May God make you pregnant!’ said one. “Pregnant!” shrieked her friend, “She’s an Anissa, you blind one! She means, may God find you a husband, Anissa!” Tamima stopped to take a good look at the women’s faces. She wanted to quip back, but didn’t know what to say. So she just smiled at them. “Let’s go,” urged Osama. She gave Osama a curt smile, and followed him into the government building. Scanning her surroundings, she made a quick mental note that she was the only unveiled woman inside; if not one of a handful in a sea of men. On the peeled, cracked gray walls above the plastic orange seats was a huge poster. ‘The Heroes of January 25. The Police Martyrs,’ it read. Underneath the header were around 50 thumbnails of sullen, sunken faces. “Priceless,” she thought. “They still insist and they still remember!” She inched closer to take a better look at the faces from a bygone era. “Small time crooks,” she first thought. But then something else emerged. The eyes and mouths were vacant and forlorn. Which led her to entertain another thought. These men were draftees from remote villages; Clueless public servants at the end of the command chain. They had no choice in killing. They were just obeying orders; which inadvertently put them in the line of fire. She wished she could take a photo, but thought better of it. The sense of paranoia and intimidation pervaded the air and permeated her skin. “After you, Madame!” Osama’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts. He had the elevator door open for her. Hordes of people were stuffing themselves in before the ones inside could make an exit. Once everyone guaranteed a spot, all eyes turned to her.
“Come in,” they urged unanimously. “There’s space!” “Where?” she thought. “Never mind, I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself.” She clinched her bag closer to her chest and took the plunge. Inside, she stood straight as an arrow with barely a twitch, her eyes fixed on the weight capacity sign. Do Not Exceed 640 Kilograms, it read. She made a swift head count without moving a muscle. There were 11 people in this elevator, with an estimated average weight of 80 Kilograms each. She could not breathe. Not just because of the sidewalk, the government building, the poster, or the elevator, but because of what they all signified to her. Tamima was not altogether comfortable with what she was about to do in this building. She sat on one of the many plastic orange seats lining the peeled and cracked gray walls waiting, then she remembered: Everything happened in the heat of the moment. They met during the 18 days leading to the toppling of Mubarak. They were both members in the same youth movement, which met regularly at the CCC Club in Garden City. He worked in a corporate law firm, and she was a young and promising journalist. Armed with an infectious happy energy, a natural affinity with people, she believed she could change the world. He was calm, collected and aloof. When he spoke, which was rare, he commanded the respect and attention of the entire room; And when he was simply observing, he possessed the effortless gravitas of a man who knew a lot about the world. He observed her ardor with utter fascination. Tamima sparkled in front of him and she knew it. But what she did not expect was that her flattery would give way to intimidation, something that she had never experienced before. “After you, Madame.” Osama led her through a corridor, where police guards sat sipping their tea and watching passers by. Rooms shrouded in cigarette smoke and a general feel of ennui flanked the passageway. Finally, she was ushered into one of them. It was threadbare, yet oddly enough laden with character. There were no pictures on the walls, not even of President Al Sissy. There were no plaques, no stationary and no files on the desks; just tea dregs and burnt cigarette butts in glass cups. The leather sofas were ripped and gutted with their sponge filling bulging out like the entrails of slaughtered lamb. She sat on one of them facing a young man in a white galabiyya. He was bearded without a mustache, which immediately indicated his Salafi leanings. Behind one of the desks sat a government employee, with jaundiced eyes inhaling the smoke that he’d just exhaled as he lazily spoke on his mobile phone. Both men did not look at her. But while the man with the white galabiyya was painfully aware of her, the government employee was completely unaware. “What these bare walls must’ve witnessed,” she thought. “Faten Hamama and Omar al Sharif’s divorce, maybe? Nasser’s first ID as President?.. The death certificates of thousands and thousands of Egyptian youth? …. Maybe not…And what about these leather seats? How many bottoms must’ve sat here over time? Probably millions. All shapes and sizes, and from all walks of life… they probably haven’t changed these seats since that very first bottom.” Their first time alone together was on the CCC terrace. She stepped out to smoke a cigarette. He followed and asked her for a lighter. She found herself struggling to stand still. She put one hand on the rail and puffed away nervously with the other, but it felt awkward, especially with her bitten fingernails on display. So she started twirling a short strand of her cropped hair around her finger. He stood there observing, affectionately, with a grin that made her weak at the knees. He made no secret of gliding his eyes over her flawless rose-white face. She looked down at his shoes. Their immaculate black sheen revealed a man of fine tastes. She lifted the collar of her jeans jacket and hid half her face behind it as if to warm herself, then peered shyly at him. He was wearing a perfectly tailored designer suit. “Here I am, falling for a man in a designer suit.” He gently hooked his finger into hers and freed her short strand now curled around itself. She did not stop him.
“Toota,” he said with a big smile.
“Sorry?” she muttered.
“Toota.”
Her fate was sealed. She had been known by a few nicknames amongst family and friends, Tammy, Mima, Mimi, but Toota was odd. It just didn’t fit her. She belonged to a family of strong an independent individuals. In raising her and her brother, her parents always stressed on individuality, curiosity, and independence with gender roles playing no part. Her father was a diplomat and an avid reader of history. His posts took the family to some of the most interesting destinations; From Chile to Greece to Mozambique. Her mother, a flamboyant character, was a jewelry designer with a husky voice and a penchant for cigars. As for her older brother, he was a computer scientist who had founded his own IT start-up. Their parents taught them to depend on themselves and work for what they wanted from an early age. When Tamima decided to pursue a higher degree in journalism at the age of 25, it was her decision, and responsibility. She built a strong portfolio, got a full scholarship, and took off on her own.
“Where is your husband’s ID?” The voice interrupted.
It was the man with jaundiced eyes. Tamima rummaged through her bag
“Oh no, I forgot it… no, no wait, here it is.”
She pulled a card out.
“Oh. Wait. This is my driving license. Would this work?”
Osama looked at her in disbelief then turned to the man to try and salvage the situation. Tamima watched as Osama’s whole demeanor transformed. With his body arched forward and his voice reduced to a whimper, he said:
“Forgive us, Sir. She got her driving license by mistake, but look! Look! The information is identical. We are sorry.”
The salafi man was getting even more uncomfortable now that all attention was on her. Osama then whispered something in the man’s ear.
“Go to Lieutenant Mustafa on the ground floor. See what he could do for you,” said the man.
Osama’s face swelled with gratitude. He gave the man an exaggerated salute, stomped one foot, and marched off. Tamima followed.
“Do I really want to do this..” she wondered “Change the status on my national ID to ‘married?’ For God’s sake, do I even know if this is going to last? … When did my limbs become so limp? and how did he become my crutch?”
They fell fast for each other. The heady times played a decisive role in their romance. Their days in the Square saw them form a formidable team. They became the best versions of themselves, heroes on a heroic bend. They thought anything was possible. They thought they could change the world. She expressed herself to him in bits and pieces. At first he listened to her stories with a kind of rapture, but then one story led to another, and one question led to another. The more he knew about her, the more he became reserved. After all, at 28, Tamima was not exactly a debutante. Besides, her home environment was quite liberal. There were no secrets in her house. Growing up, her parents did not differentiate between her and her brother on any count. They had the same freedoms, restrictions and opportunities. As his love grew, he also became critical of the very qualities that had attracted him to her in the first place. He became critical of her strengths, of her freedom, and particularly of her past relationships. Egypt’s 18 days at the Square saw women abandon the home, lead men in demonstrations, stand in front of police tanks, take over the megaphones, guard the gates, and even guard the night. All of which had led to the, momentarily, dissolution of sexual barriers, and a celebration of women as equals. They were in that Square together, side by side. He did not need a revolution. He was already an enlightened and confidant man. She thought he could handle all that she is, that he could respect her past, even though it might make him jealous. At 28, she had lived alone, earned her own money, travelled the world, and fell in love more than once. He probed and she had nothing to hide. She told him who was her first, who broke her heart, and whose heart was broken. He listened, stone-faced. That night she went to bed and woke up to the sound of sobbing coming from the balcony. She got up in a panic and found him on his knees. Rocking himself on the cold tiles and sobbing. The problem became so severe in the months that followed that to her shock, he demanded that she sees a psychiatrist. He loved her, he said, and expressed his wish to marry her, but in order to take this step he had to feel secure and stable in their union. He told her only men had no qualms about casual sex. She tried to explain to him that it was not casual, but that made him probe more. Did she have any regrets, he asked. “No,” came her answer. Then something must be fundamentally wrong with her. He started yelling. She needed rehabilitation. He argued that she would not be able to exist within Egyptian society the way she is, let alone instill the values that he wanted in their children. She was crushed, but at the same time, she found it impossible to walk away. It was too late. She was irrevocably, dangerously in love. Something inside her told her that he did not mean what he said and that there must be another reason for saying it. Instead of taking offense to his words, she convinced herself that this was the purest form of flattery. He loved her, and love drives one mad. If anything, his behavior indicated that he could not bear sharing her with someone else, not even in his imagination. He is a strong man, she told herself, and she, only she, could bring him to his knees. So she stayed, and promised herself never to give him a reason to be insecure. To hell with her past! She tore old photos, poems, notes, and un-friended everyone on social media with the potential to unsettle their relationship.
“Madame?” it was Osama.
She had unwittingly stopped in her tracks in front of the Men’s restroom. The door was like a palimpsest of scribbles, reiterating the same thing over and over again in different colors: ‘Manhood,’ in red spray paint, ‘Men,’ in ink, and ‘Manly,’ in a thick black felt pen. There was even a tiny doodle of a man’s penis next to the knob. The door was closed, but it might as well have been open. The stench of the disinfectant mixed with the stink of urine permeated through the door and parched papyrus-colored paint.
“Madame!” it was Osama again.
Tamima suddenly realized how bizarre this sight must’ve looked.
“I need the woman’s restroom,” she told him, “just go to the Lieutenant’s office and I will catch up with you in a minute,” she said.
She waited until he took a left at the end of the corridor then pulled out her mobile phone. She looked around quickly, before snapping a picture of the battered door. Strangely enough, she was feeling a reconnection with herself here; at a government building of all places; Maybe because that poster had touched a buried part of her, had transported her to another time and place. She felt free to think for herself here, with a kind of clarity that she hadn’t experienced in years. Osama was walking really fast, but there was a lot that Tamima wanted to stop at and absorb, like that board plastered on several walls. “The Fundamentals of Police Behavioral Conduct,” it read. She looked around before quickly taking a picture with her mobile phone and hurrying to catch up with Osama. As she sat waiting by the Lieutenant’s office, she looked at the picture she’d just taken. Words and broken meanings faded in and out: Power to the people.. Respect for human rights.. Freedom of expression… Honesty .. Transparency ..Plurality.. Democracy. She looked inside the Lieutenant’s office and found a swarm of veiled government employees fluttering around him. He stood in their midst like a knight in shining armor, tall, broad, and tyrannical. He made eyes with this one and leaned against that one, while they blushed and flushed and ran out of breath. They all fell for the uniform. They were all seeking a way out of the home at any cost. She found herself wondering what a night with this man would be like. Would he mount her like a prisoner of war? Would he be kind to her the morning after? Did they really think this man was their salvation from the father, the brother, the mother, the neighborhood, the country? He shot a look her way. It was fast, but had the will of a bullet. A sudden confidence took command of her body, as she sat there in one piece, one leg gracefully draped over the other. Then his coffee was served and the women dispersed.
“You will need to sweet talk the Lieutenant since you forgot your ID. Also, excuse me for saying this, but you also should thank him for receiving you in his office,” Osama said, “Don’t worry.”
“Protocol!” Dr. Aziz said.
He was annoyed he could not get through to her.
“You need to learn how to conduct yourself in this society. Tamima, you are a lady!”
She laughed.
“What is so funny!”
Dr. Aziz was the psychiatrist he had chosen for her.
“Look at how you’re sitting. Don’t slouch!” he shrieked. “What is so funny!”
She obeyed and sat up straight. Everything about him was large, his physique, his demeanor and his tastes. Although she received most of his advice with cynicism, there was always an element of amusement. Dr. Aziz was a society man who appreciated the finer things in life. Whole sessions were spent on talking about how to tell the difference between an original Limoges dining set and a fake one, or on the difference between real Czech crystals and artificial ones. She did not know nor care about such topics, but he derived so much pleasure out of them that she let him talk all he wanted. With time, however, the sessions did eventually bring about change. Dr. Aziz’s approach was quite effective. In their first meeting, he told her there is no such thing as “fixing’ a patient. He asked her what she expected out of their sessions and she simply told him she wanted to be with this man. He told her that would be the goal they would work towards. He told her that her past was hers alone, and that only she reserved the right to disclose her secrets. He taught her discretion. He showed her how to turn a situation to her favor, how to think before speaking, and when not to speak at all. He taught her how to tell her man what he wanted to hear so that she could get what she wanted. He taught her how to act in public who to allow from her past, and how to behave when someone from that past reappeared. Dr. Aziz also paid a lot of attention to her image. He despised her cropped hair and urged her to grow it out. At the start of every session, he would inspect her nails and skin and reprimand her for not grooming herself.
“What is this!” he would say. “Your hands are dryer than mine! Stop biting your nails.”
All that went against Tamima’s very nature. Reserve was not one of her qualities either, but she was so determined to make it work between them, that she was prepared to do anything. Eventually, Toota became more than a nickname, it became a way of life. In bed, she was too scared to show her experience or express any wild desires. She became caged in and gave him the lead. He derived pleasure out of dominating her, as if that would heal his bruised pride or dispossess her of her past. When the big day came, she found herself letting go of one wish after another and succumbing to his will. Initially he had agreed with her that an intimate celebration by the beach is what he wanted too. But then there were his colleagues at the firm, his high profile clients, and his parents’ society friends. When it came to their home, she had assumed that he would give her space to be creative and to let her home reflect her tastes as well, but that wasn’t the case either. He argued that he needed to entertain his clients, and dictated every choice. He wanted something sober, more somber; Leather couches, cherry wood, plush fabrics and subdued shades all around. He told her where to go and asked her to come back to him with samples to choose from. When she was finally done, she did not recognize herself in any corner. The living space looked more like a cigar lounge than a home.
“Toota, I need you to keep your distance from the help.”
She was too friendly, he complained.
“Toota, why don’t you straighten your hair? How could anyone take you seriously like this?”
“Toota, I think it’s better if you stop coming to my office. I’m not comfortable with my colleagues ogling my wife. I’m set to become a partner soon, you know.”
Eventually, he even started putting limitations on her work.
“Listen, I don’t want you working around the Downtown area anymore. Who goes there anymore.”
“Tell you what, why don’t I hire you a driver? Do you see how people drive nowadays?”
“Why are your colleagues calling you at such an hour? Show some respect!”
She was too naiive, he argued. She trusted people too much. He loved her. He wanted to protect her. She should trust him. He knew better.
The Lieutenant shot another look her way and signaled with his finger for her to come in. She entered with Osama tagging along, and sat down waiting while he pretended to be busy with files on his desk.
“Sir,” Osama started his groveling plea, “forgive us, the Madame here forgot her husband’s national ID. We would be so grateful if-“
Tamima could not take another second of this bootlicking.
“Osama.” she finally said. “That will be it. Please wait outside.”
Osama froze mid-monologue.
“But, but-“ he muttered.
“I said wait outside,” she demanded firmly.
She waited for him to leave before turning to the Lieutenant and extending her arm across the desk.
“Tamima al-Sharif,” she said, introducing herself.
It took him a few seconds to respond. She gave his hand a slight squeeze and watched him wriggle it out of her grip. She sat back in her seat, and began talking:
“I initially came here to add my husband’s name to my ID,” she started. “It is not my idea, but you know, it makes it easier to do things together, like vote for the next president. Will you be voting, Lieutenant?”
He did not respond.
“Oh, right. The police force is not allowed to vote. I would vote for Mona Prince,” she continued, “but there is no way she could collect a million signatures. Have you heard of her?”
He shrugged.
“You wouldn’t. She is this crazy university professor who got suspended for teaching her student’s Milton’s Paradise Lost. Have you heard of Paradise Lost?”
She could see him getting angry, but she continued:
“I know there was no hope in her ever winning.. You know with all that nonsense she stands for.. ‘dreams, knowledge, art, literature, freedom’… but you know I would be voting for a principle.”
She looked up at the big board plastered all over the building. There it was again, on his wall.
“You know, power to the people.. respect for human rights, civil society and all that nonsense.”
“How can I help you, Madame Kamel?”
He used her marital name on purpose. She ignored the dig.
“Such a shame you can’t vote. It only makes sense that those who uphold those values the most are allowed to partake in their realization, don’t you think? Anyway, I know you’re a busy man. There are hundreds of people who come asking for favors everyday. They probably come from all over the country. They take trains, microbuses and wait for hours at your door. You probably send them off for a missing stamp or signature.”
“Madame Kamel, you are here because General Rafiq gave orders to receive you well and expedite your papers. How can I help you!” he scowled.
She ignored his dig again.
“My point is, these people need your time more than me. If you do not help them, I’d imagine they will probably have nowhere to sleep in the big city, until they get their papers in order.”
She stood up.
“I thank you for your time, and of course, please do thank General Rafiq. But as you know, I forgot my husband’s national ID at home today. And besides, it doesn’t really matter. The presidency is a pre-determined matter.”
He stood up with rage searing his eyes. For a moment, she felt that he would hit her.
“Zakarriyya!” he shouted.
The coffee boy appeared.
“Show her out!”
She took a deep breath before extending her hand to him once again. He didn’t move.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Sir,” she said.
Mai Serhan is a Palestinian/Egyptian scholar and writer. She earned her BA in English & Comparative Literature and MA in Arabic Studies from The American University in Cairo, and has also studied Screenwriting at NYU. Mai’s MA thesis has recently been awarded the Magda Al-Nowahi Award for Best Thesis in Gender Studies, 2018. She is currently working on her first collection of short stories, one of which has won The Madalyn Lamont Literary Award from The American University in Cairo. The story submitted here is part of this collection.
in the emergency room. He is sliding on a rolling bed from one room to the next. We follow him, a broken up herd. He’s sleeping with his mouth slightly open and if it weren’t for the white walls and acid smell I would think he’s just fallen asleep watching Shadia and Abdel Halim’s movie again. But Abdel Halim’s long gone And Shadia followed a few days ago.
Grandpa’s lying
in the emergency room.
He opens
his eyes
when I call
his name,
then goes back to sleep.
For what seems like an hour,
I stare at the paleness of his face
barely visible on the white
sanitized hospital sheets.
I watch
the rise and fall
of his chest,
a disappointing spectacle.
I keep watching
his chest
closely,
like one does
when trying to catch
an actor breathing
while playing dead.
There is hardly any sign of life but the machines attached to him are beeping; it must mean that we are still in the same room.
Grandpa’s lying in the emergency room. And I’ve never seen my aunts cry before. My grandma, I have but not tonight; she seems more detached than grandpa is; and no amount of cliché words of consolation can bring her back.
Grandpa’s back From the emergency room. He’s fallen asleep in his new wheelchair watching Shadia and Abdel Halim’s movie again.
Grandpa’s out of the emergency room. but I am still there. I always will be.
Aya Telmissany is a 22-year-old student at The American University in Cairo. She is majoring in English and Comparative Literature and minoring in both Creative Writing and Arabic Literature. She won in the French international poetry contest “Poésie en Liberté” in 2014 and was also awarded the first prize in the Madalyn Lamont Award For Creative Writing in English by the Department of English and Comparative Literature at AUC in 2018 for a collection of ten short poems. She also writes and edits poetry for the Egyptian online magazine CairoContra.
