Leila - February 9, 2011

They come home weary, overjoyed, bursting with stories of the square and pride that for the first time in their lives, they’ve been part of something significant. An immeasurable change in this beloved country.

Here I hide in the kitchen, washing up the mountains of cups and eavesdropping on their fervent conversations outside. I’m left out.

I can’t go home to my family in Nasr City; I need to be here and part of this. My neurotic father has made me promise I won’t enter foot in Tahrir; in return I can ‘sleep over’ at my friend’s place for as long as I want.

I don’t lie, I just tiptoe around the truth with him. He doesn’t need to know that I’ve been to the square a few times, but only when I’m sure it’s safe and I can walk around with my camera, listening to the heated debates and taking photos of the determined faces.

Once, I tried to go alone at night, but five minutes away from Tahrir, I saw a man shot in the face. I knew it then – running back to the flat with bile rising and hot tears streaming down into my screaming mouth – that I’m not made of the same cloth as my friends who parade their wounds and bruises like warriors.

We’ve taken refuge in this flat just three streets away from Tahrir, a perfect location in the heart of the monster. This once opulent neighbourhood was home to the glamorous icons of the golden Egyptian cinema days. The pashas and the diplomats had large villas with winding staircases overlooking the flowing Nile, tainted French windows spewing the light from their generous chandeliers. French gardens with imposing palm trees.

Now, you hear the echoes of Tahrir in the distance, the heaving and sighing of thousands of people throughout the night, like one chest inhaling deeply, preparing for another long battle.
Gunshots, fumes, screaming, the grounds trembling as army tanks roll through the streets and shots fired into the air, bodies dragged into the dark, speech after speech by the old, stubborn Mubarak refusing to leave, and still the people pour into the square. And the chest heaves again.

Ahmed walks in, floorboards creaking under the weight of his muddy boots as his backpack slides to the floor. We flock to him to eager moths to a flame. He has that singular power over everyone, larger than his own skin contain him.

His shoulders sag with exhaustion; he runs his hands through his greasy hair and over his unshaven face. Two weeks have dragged out in this worn out heartbeat of a square; and with everything you’ve seen – on the streets or on the TV; you can’t wash the nightmare out of your hair.

He looks at me pleadingly, and I pick up a towel and throw it at him. Then he tells us what’s happening outside on the streets.

At the end of his stories about old men dying in makeshift hospitals on corners of Tahrir, of watching a doctor burst into tears because he couldn’t stop the bleeding of a 15-year-old boy’s gunshot wound, Ahmed pauses for breath. And then, somehow, he laughs.

He always pinpoints the ridiculousness of it all, which is his way of coping with the nightmares he’s seen. And I live (laugh) vicariously through him.

Every day, I find myself whiling away the hours glued to the TV and Twitter, arguing with my friends on Facebook, playing with my camera and waiting for a brief moment alone with Ahmed in this packed house of haggard faces. No matter how late in the night it is, or how often my father has called to threaten manslaughter; I wait.

Once, he came back limping at three in the morning, and asked me to help him bandage his foot. When I rolled up his trousers, I found his lower leg full of black, ugly bruises. He wouldn’t talk about it; instead he drank. Just like his friend Hamed, who was beaten up badly a few days ago. Instead of going to a hospital, Hamed showed up the next evening, bandaged and bruised, grinning feebly. They channeled their energy into joking and drinking.

Later in the night and several cups of cheap whiskey later, I found myself shouldering Hamed on one side and Ahmed on the other, as they attempted a heated and intoxicated argument.

‘I got shot at.’

‘Bitch, I got beaten.’

‘I got tear gassed three times.’

The debate continued until the bottle was finished, and Amani kindly pointed them to either the couch or the door, depending on how far they could make it.

Ahmed fascinates me. He smiles broadly like an open book, and welcomes me into his arms, but I’m never really let in. In the absence of personal details in any conversation, in the way he skirts around stories of his family like a graceful swimmer, how he avoids my eyes when I ask a serious question; I can tell he is a complex man.
I’m intrigued.

We found ourselves alone one evening. There was a lull on the streets, and I – tired of the weeks of pasta in tomato sauce and no decent sleep – was heading home to wash my hair and eat a decent meal with my parents. Then he walked in, brandishing grocery bags and offering to make me pasta. I found myself nodding instantly, like an incontrollable reflex reaction.

I sat next to him on the Turkish carpet, leaning against the couch while we ate off plastic dishes. He opened a bottle of cheap red wine and told me about his trips around Africa, of the open skies of the Western deserts and the waterfalls of Namibia.

We stretched our feet out in front of us, and his eyes focused on the ceiling, which seemed to close in on him compared to the barren skies of his stories. I let myself daydream about an open space of quiet solitude, somewhere far and undiscovered. Somewhere alone with him.

He talked about water, waterfalls and rivers, and in that moment, he let his fingers trail down my legs like rain. He said nothing, and I told myself it meant nothing; that we were in a revolution without a clear tomorrow; anything could happen.

This means nothing. But then I found that I’d stopped breathing since he’d first touched me, and my heart was in my mouth and my ears bursting with the noise in my head, wondering whether I should pull him towards me or wait for him to make a move – and then the doorbell rang. And friends walked in, huffing loudly, and stepping over our space on the carpet.

I contemplated murder.