Cairo

You sit on your balcony in the dark, smoking furiously as a helicopter roars through the bleak skies above. You’ve learned to tune out its sound, and now it’s become a welcome part of your catatonic life. What you can’t get used to are the gunshots.

And here they come. Explosions in the night, shots roll off through the mist, sinister with a deeper echo. This time, they come too close to home. Your sister rushes to turn all the lights off in the house. You sit there frozen in the dark, too scared to move. You smoke another cigarette.

He stumbles and falls onto the asphalt, his palms graze the surface as his knees hit gravel. The midnight sky is on fire with the yellow streetlights and burning glass flying through the air. He picks himself up as someone flies towards him, screaming something but he can’t hear through the roar of metal hitting rock and cries in the dark. The man throws himself on top of him, and then he feels the wave of bullets raining down.

In your bed, you fall asleep and pray you don’t wake up. In your sleep, you hear the helicopters and the echoes in the distance. It could be the sound of far off traffic on the other side of the Nile, it could be the train passing over the iron bridge in Shobra, but to you it sounds like the thousands of humans crying out for help, trapped in Tahrir Square and you can’t reach them. You cry in your sleep.

The TVs are on in every room. Five people type furiously away at their laptops, yelling at each other over the lull of Al Jazeera’s excited chatter. Have you found him yet? Her phone rings, it’s him. She hands it to her colleague, he listens, tries to talk, his normally calm face is distorted as he hands it to her. ‘Write down what they’re saying,’ he urges her, ‘write every word down. He’s been kidnapped and they don’t know he has his phone on.’

You son of a dog. You were talking to journalists? Slap. Keep your hands up high. You dogs. You’re ruining our country. You’re destroying Egypt. This is Egypt, we are Egyptians. Cries in the room. A woman argues with the policemen. She is fierce, unafraid. How dare you, she says. We are all Egyptians. We are lawyers. We are fighting for this country. Commotion. Get up. Give us your bags. Yes, basha, they are all spies. Phone goes dead.

He carries the limp body through the back streets, running but his legs will give way from the weight of this child and his own exhaustion. Muscles burn as his feet feel the rocks, glass, debris through his thin sneakers. He finds the kiosk, a man in a white coat scoops up the body, shouting at him. He shakes his head. He can’t hear him.

The seconds between sleep and wake are the most precious moments of your day, when life is normal and you’re in your warm bed. Life is normal. And then you remember there’s a war outside. This is a nightmare, you realize, and you are awake.

She pushes her way through the crowd outside the army tank, her national ID between her teeth with her hands in the air, ready for yet another apologetic woman to pat her down. ‘Maalesh,’ they always say, ‘We’re doing this for your own good. To protect you.’ Inside the square, she has walked into the mouth of the beast, and it’s beautiful.
Masses and masses of people walk around, some carrying banners, others cardboard posters, many waving the flag. They each stop for her to take their photograph, smiling at her. Please hear us, their eyes urge, and she takes each and every photograph to please them. It’s the least she can do. A man sits on the asphalt in the middle of the crowd, his mouth taped over with a small paper that reads simply ‘Leave’. His cheeks are sunken in, he refuses to talk or eat. His eyes look up to the sky imploringly, as another helicopter swoops over the crowd.

The belly of the beast roars, fists flung into the air, defiant cheers. ‘Leave,’ they cry as one, ‘Leave.’ Right, left and centre, people are arguing, yelling, asking to be heard. And she realizes, this is the first time these quiet voices have spoken. Here, they feel safe. This is our square, our country. Listen to us. We are no longer quiet.

On the island, the woman flicks back her hair and examines her nails critically. ‘I asked for them to be painted red, the colour of the flag,’ she tells her companion proudly. Then she sighs. ‘I only wish they would stop this nonsense and go home. He’s heard their demands. The whole world has heard them. Now, they must go home. I need my life back. I can’t believe they burnt down Tamarai. Where are we going to go out partying now?’

The doctor in his fine tweed jacket and rimmed glasses chokes up on TV. ‘I see blood every day in the surgery room,’ he says quietly, ‘But this blood...the injuries I saw were inhumane.’ She turns off the TV, she cannot watch anymore.

You wrap your arms around your father’s neck, cradle your face against his cheek and breathe in his scent. Everyday you hold him a little longer than usual, thinking ‘He could die today.’ Everyday you say goodbye silently.

Joy, joy, joy, joy, joy, joy, JOY! You can beat me down, you can kill me. I will come back, millions of me will come back. Fear of death is conquered by this absolute love. This land I have loved for so long in shame is now mine and my joy cannot be taken away. Never again. JOY!

He pulls the zipper of his leather jacket up and warms his hands in his pockets. It is 2AM. The four young boys turn to him silently, waiting for guidance. His phone rings, it’s his mother again. They call every time they hear gunshots, which tonight is almost every fifteen minutes. She and his sister are awake upstairs, huddling in front of the TV screen, transfixed by the images of the square under attack, while he guards the building entrance with a large baseball bat.

Two of the boys have guns, one has made his own Molotov cocktail, ready to be lit. The looters come when the night turns quiet. On every street corner, groups of men stand guard with their various weapons, as their women lie awake in their homes, frantic, silent, waiting. Last night, they caught another one. He had a police ID card on him, the fifth one this week. This cannot be a coincidence.

His palms are sweating, his head hurts, and every half hour when he feels the bile rising up through his throat, he excuses himself and runs upstairs to vomit. They cannot see his panic attacks. They cannot see him weak. They look to him for guidance. And he is scared out of his mind.

I want my life back. I want my hot coffee in a paper cup. My car cruising across the beautiful Nile, reflecting the colourful lights of the boats and buildings that make Cairo mine. I want the life I left that was full of laughter, dancing, joy in a bubble. This is a nightmare. And life will never be normal again.

She was only fourteen. And they shot her in the back as she took photos of the policemen beating up a little boy. The hospital wouldn’t take her. The police had threatened them; do not accept gunshot victims. She was only a child.

He sits on the remains of the pavement. The sun is rising in the distance, beyond the smog of the Semiramis. Dawn would normally be broken by the sound of the morning call to prayer. But here in the square, there is silence. God has left us, he thinks, we are on our own. Exhausted, he rests his head in his hands, feels the stubble of his shaven scalp, tries to remember his soft bed. I could leave. But they won't. And they have no home to return to. This now, Tahrir is home. Tahrir is ours.

An old man sits down next to him. He has a clumsy bandage over one eye and there’s blood on the collar of his tired shirt. The old man taps him timidly, then offers him some dates, insists when he refuses, insists until he accepts. It would be rude to refuse, it’s the least he can do. He chews on the dates, then silently offers the man his last cigarette. He accepts demurely and says, ‘My wife would kill me for this. But today we are fighters, aren’t we? Sabah El Foll.’ Morning of the jasmine. He smiles at him.