With trembling fingers she slid the key into the lock and went in. As she stood in the empty room she could hear her own heartbeat; one breath followed the next in quick succession, as her chest heaved. ‘Saleem!’ she called out faintly, but the flat was empty. She felt that dream-like amazement: the things we hold tight vanish in an instant, the body we embrace disappears in a flash, and when we open our eyes in the dark we see nothing but the wall and the bed beneath us.
She felt for what was beneath her and realized it was the sofa she had sat on the day before. She stretched out her arm in the dark and it hit the hard cold wall. She closed her eyes again and wondered if she was dreaming, but she was not. She knew Saleem was not there, that she was alone in his empty house, sitting wide awake on the sofa. She tried to make sure she was really awake but did not know how. All she could do was run her hand over her body, but she did that in dreams too when she was not sure if she was asleep or not. This frightened her, for she could not be sure of anything in her life. Any attempt to make certain would only add to her doubts.
When she opened her eyes in the morning she realized that she did not feel the familiar touch of her own bed. She saw the window and the mountain beyond it, and leapt up. It was the first night she had ever spent away from home, her first night in someone else’s bed. She imagined her father bellowing like a bull after searching for her everywhere. She imagined her mother, sisters, uncles, aunts and everyone in the family fanning out across the world like locusts to look for her.
She walked heavily towards the mirror. It was obvious she had slept in her clothes; the whites of her eyes were tinged pink as if she had been crying or had stayed awake late into the night. She looked different from usual. She had always been a model girl, her clothes freshly pressed, the whites of her eyes clear, showing that she was a polite, obedient girl who slept in her own bed, had no worries and had never once cried in her entire life.
She had no idea where to go that morning, but her feet carried her to the medical college as usual. The grounds were crowded with students buzzing with unaccustomed activity. She fought her way through and headed for the dissecting room, but a male student stood in her way, saying, ‘There’s a strike today: no lectures, no dissecting room.’
She saw the other female students approaching with their bulging leather satchels and their closely-bound legs.
‘Let’s hurry home before public transport stops running’, said one of the girls on hearing the news.
‘Will it stop?’
‘They say the tram and bus workers are coming out on strike too.’
‘Why?’
‘You ought to be ashamed . . . Don’t you live on this planet?’
‘They’re just kids; it’ll all be over soon and they’ll go back to their notes.’
‘Medical students don’t care about anything but studying and memorizing their lectures. It’s the law and arts students who know something about strikes!’
Questions and comments flew back and forth among the girls. Then: ‘Let’s go take a look’, said one. But another pulled Bahiah towards the tram: ‘Let’s go home. The exam is only a month off.’
Shoulder to shoulder for support, they walked in a bunch towards the tram with their bowed heads and defeated eyes, their tightly-bound legs and their worm-like crawl.
Bahiah was now all alone, looking from afar at the crowd of male students as they assembled, trying to pick out that extraordinary face and those blue-black eyes that could see her and pick out her face from all the others. She leant against the wall, her bulging satchel dangling from her hand; her eyes looked up searching, her sharp, upturned nose divided the world in two and her lips were pursed in anger. She had never liked medical students, especially in big crowds. In her mind’s eye she still saw them as they pushed into the lecture hall, with their thick glasses, bowed backs and sharp elbows, their eyes greedy for anything with the softness of flesh.
Suddenly the world seemed to rumble and shake as if an earthquake were rocking sky and earth. But she realized it was not an earthquake, but the sound of thousands of voices raised in unison: like the roar of thunder, like millions of voices melting into one enormous sound, filling the world, not merely reaching the ears but penetrating the pores of the skin and investing all the orifices of the body, spreading like gas and flowing like blood through the cells.
Minutes passed before she got used to the tremor and the sound. For the first time in her life she heard a slogan chanted by thousands of voices in one long, deep breath, as wide as the sky and as strong as a gale uprooting houses and trees. So great was the chorus that at first she could not make out the words of the slogan. Then the word ‘Egypt’ rang out. Not the ‘Egypt’ she was used to hearing from her father, mother, teacher, or fellow students, but ‘Egypt’ in that strong, mighty voice that filled the world and shook the earth and the skies. A shiver passed through her body and her hair stood on end. She felt a soft, warm motion under her eyelids like tears, and childhood images flashed before her eyes, rippling and dissolving as if under water: her mother’s warm breast and the smell of milk as she lay in her arms; the smell of dust and fig-trees in their village; her father’s hand guiding her across the street; her aunt’s long thin face as she coughed and spat blood; the eyes of her young brothers and sisters shut tight as they slept in a row, their open mouths drooling over the pillow; the hungry eyes of children along the canal; the lines of sick people in the hospital grounds; the wailing of women in their black, dusty clothes as they swarmed behind the corpse on its way out of the dissecting room.
She swallowed her tears and remained standing, her body still shivering and the great chorus still ringing out. The demonstration passed right by her. She saw faces different from those she knew from the dissecting room, bodies different from those she had seen forcing their way into the lecture hall. Their features were as sharp as swords, their complexions muddy, their backs straight and unbending, their eyes raised and their legs firm and rippling with muscles, as their feet strode over the earth, shaking sky and trees. She found herself with them and part of them, like part of an immense body with one heart and a single set of features. Her cheeks were rosy, her nose was sharp, dividing the world in two, her eyes stared straight ahead; she held her head high, her back straight and the muscles of her leg taut, while her footsteps shook the earth and her voice broke free from her throat, filling the world as she chanted with all her might, ‘Egypt shall be free!’
She had the strange sensation of blending into the larger world, of becoming part of the infinite extended body of humanity, of dissolving like a drop of water in the sea or a particle of air in the atmosphere. It was a delicious, wonderful feeling, an overwhelming happiness as intoxicating for her body as the ecstasy she had experienced yesterday in that far-away place in the bosom of the mountain, or as a child when she saw the mythical god crushing something in his grip, then opening it and it was gone, or her childish laugh when her mother embraced her with all her might and their bodies would almost melt into one.
Her body had felt a hidden desire since childhood, since she developed a body of her own separate from the world. It was a persistent desire to return to the world, to dissolve to the last atom so that she would be liberated and disembodied and weightless, like a free spirit hovering without constraints of time or place and with no chains to tie her to earth.
It was a desire for the limitless, overwhelming freedom that comes only when you opt for salvation and destroys the hair’s breadth that separates life from death — when you no longer fear death. When you have overcome the fear of death, you become capable of anything in life, including death itself.
At that moment she felt she could pierce iron with her body, take bullets and poisoned daggers in her chest, and that no power on earth could make her body fall, stop her legs from moving on, or prevent her voice from calling out for freedom. She was determined that there would be no going back; no power on earth could stand between her and her freedom.
/> And as if this decision had allowed her to relax, she let her body dissolve in the world, moving to its rhythm. Her steps were as a dancer’s in a chorus. Her voice was not chanting a slogan, it was singing. The whole world was singing with her:
‘My country, my country, I love you with all my heart.’
The sound came up from her lungs like warm breaths. Under her ribs her heart pounded, her insides throbbed, and old wounds and past burdens left her body with each breath and heartbeat. Her eyes shed salty tears of joy that flowed down her cheeks and into her nose and mouth. As she licked the tears, she could not stop laughing and singing:
‘My country, my country, I love you with all . . . ’
The words ‘I love you’ were torn from her heart like a living part of her flesh, like her own warm blood. She shouted the words with all the strength she could muster, with all her suppressed desire to love and to fly as free as a bird in the sky.
Was it love that allowed her to understand all these feelings? She realized that it was. Real love makes us capable of loving everything and everyone; we open our arms to embrace the earth, the sky and the trees — only on opening our eyes do we realize that we are embracing a specific individual. The features and external boundaries are those we know by heart and which we could pick out from among the million bodies floating in the world; we recognize this particular individual with all his characteristics, and his eyes which can pick us out from among all other human beings.
These moments passed like a dream. All happy moments seem like a dream, and she awoke to the sound of gunfire. It was this sound that brought her back to the reality of her life and to the chains that tied her to the earth. The more bullets rang out, the more aware of the truth she became. She saw some students fall to the ground. Others advanced, facing the bullets head on, while still others sought protection in the doorways of houses and shops.
She stood still as a statue, her black eyes gazing up. Had a bullet been aimed at her body, she would have been killed immediately, but she knew she could not die against her will. She did not want to die yet: but she wanted to cry. Sadness was the only truth in her life. Before she had laughed without really wanting to; when she had been happy she had always had the inner conviction that this happiness was not real and that something threatened her, threatened her very life. Another will was always lying in wait for her, lurking round every corner, waiting for an opportunity to attack her when there was no one to rescue her, neither her father nor mother, brothers nor sisters. No one at all.
Suddenly, as if it had surged from the depths of the earth, she saw Saleem’s face. He was kneeling to lift a bleeding body. All the images vanished from her eyes. Only that face with its distinct features remained as he slowly crossed the square, carrying a body: the head lolled and the white shirt was soaked with red blood, leaving a long red trail on the asphalt behind them.
She sat in the room adjacent to the operating theatre at the old Qasr al-Aini Hospital as if in a trance, suspended between belief and disbelief. She could not believe that so much had happened in so short a time. But Saleem’s blue-black eyes attested to her existence and the fact that she was not dreaming. When he disappeared into the adjoining room, things around her would lose existence and reality. When he returned and their eyes met, a strange feeling of the truth of things and of existence coursed through her body. Then she realized that this moment was her real age, that all past days and years were no more than dream or illusion.
Her mouth felt the true taste of life: hot and biting, mixed with the penetrating smell of ether and iodine. A noticeable shiver ran down her ribs, her hand trembled when she touched anything and her legs shook when she stood or walked: it was the tremor of real life, a mixture of fear and bravery, a sense of both danger and safety, a loss of time and place and yet the acquisition of a remarkable ability to experience them both. It was a heady mixture of contradictory feelings, melting in complete harmony like the colours of a rainbow.
She thought that the entire world must be in motion to provoke this strange mixture of feelings in her body: the strike, the demonstration, the chanted slogans, the anthem, the bullets, the falling bodies, the red blood flowing on the ground, the bleeding body she had helped to carry into the car, the operating theatre, the smell of ether and iodine, the doctors in their white gowns and the nurses in their white caps — it was all this that created that contradictory mixture of sensations in her body.
She felt a profound hidden sadness overlaid by a strange overwhelming happiness, evident as a glimmer in her black eyes, like a swift movement, a breath of hot air, like a child panting after a ball or a sparrow’s wings flapping in the sun. She heard one of the doctors say, ‘Magdi’s dead.’
His voice was as penetrating as another bullet, tearing through her and separating waking from dreaming, life from death. She found that seven students had died and many more were wounded, that others had been driven off to prison, and that Egypt was not free. The chains were still there, the hungry-eyed children still lived beside the canal, the columns of patients still stood in the hospital grounds spitting blood, the women in black still cried and wailed, her father still sat in his bamboo chair in the living room, and the policeman was still in his wooden shelter on the corner sniffing blood.
Her head slumped on her chest as if she was sleeping. She must really have slept because she woke to the sound of Saleem’s voice, and when he called her everything seemed like a dream: ‘Bahiah . . . ’
She leapt from her chair. ‘Bahiah’: he had picked her name among all others, recognized her face among all others, and headed towards her with his deliberate stride. Then there was his distinctive voice, ‘Bahiah, you’re exhausted. Your clothes are all blood-stained.’ She looked down and saw bloodstains on her chest and sleeves. It was Magdi’s blood, which had dried in his veins just a few minutes ago. Dr Fawzi said: ‘Saleem, your shirt is soaked with blood. Come along to the doctors’ canteen so we can clean you up.’
The doctors’ canteen was in New Qasr al-Aini street, so they crossed the small bridge leading from the old hospital to the new. The water flowed fast under the bridge, and a young couple in a rowboat laughed and waved to a blonde woman standing on the balcony of one of the Garden City palaces. The usual crowd had gathered at the hospital gates. Animals pulled carts laden with oranges. There were people with skinny faces and bodies like skeletons, women carrying children with the faces of old people, and old people with the bodies of children. There were women with men’s features and men with women’s features. On the asphalt was blood, spittle and children’s excrement; scabrous, hungry dogs rummaged in the garbage scattered here and there.
A car hooted sharply behind them. Four fat faces and eight staring eyes in a big black car. ‘Police’, Saleem whispered.
A man with a long tapering mouth like a rat approached them and said, ‘Come with me.’
No one moved and three men surrounded them and led them to a big box-like car: it was closed on all sides and dark as a prison cell inside.
She sat near a keyhole-sized crack in the side of the car. Through it she saw the streets with their crowds, cars and trams. It was almost sunset. Streets, houses and shops began to light up. People were just coming out for a stroll, a night-shift or a trip to the shops. The world was different when viewed through a small hole in a closed box. It was like the enchanted world she used to see as a child through magic lanterns or in magic tricks.
The churning in the streets and the people’s actions seemed odd to her, divorced from the world she now inhabited, a world that seemed to know nothing of food, drink, sleep, homes, fathers, mothers, shops, shoppers, new-born children, dying old people, and streets for people to walk on or rails for trams to run on. People’s movements as they walked seemed absurd and meaningless. She imagined that they were dead or lived in a passive world without warmth or pulse. The world of other people appeared dead to her. Her whole life was focused on that car like a closed box, or more specifically on th
e seat occupied by that slim body, with its exhausted head and burdened features, its deep eyes with their strange ability to see and penetrate to the reality of things.
The car stopped, the door of the box opened. Several men arrived. Walking ahead of and behind them, they took them into a strange building and she found herself in a small empty room. The door closed behind her, and she was alone. She stared at the closed door, seeing nothing else. A wide barrier of thick, dark wood separated her from Saleem; it stood between her and life, preventing her from moving and thwarting her will — like her mother’s big arms when they pulled her towards her, her mother’s voice scolding her, the sound of the tram as it crawled along the rails, the iron gate of the college, the dissecting room with its marble tables covered with the remains of corpses, the crooked legs of the male students, the beaten eyes of the female students and Dr Alawi’s blue eyes with their hidden greed.
She pounded the massive wooden door with her strong fist. She kicked it with both feet, hit it with her entire body; she bounced back and hit the wall, then threw herself at the door again. It was like someone banging against a wall and splitting open his head instead of bringing down the wall. But her head did not split. Nothing in her would break. Her body lay stretched out on the ground, taking up the space between the wall and the door. Trickles of blood ran down from her nose and ears and between her fingers and toes. A policeman opened the door, his nose sniffing the blood, his eyes spying. She stared at him with her black eyes and then looked down submissively, but like all policemen, he countered that move with arrogance, tensing the muscles of his back and neck. His eyes bulged like those of a man who had been hanged and a whip dangled from his thick, gnarled, hangman’s fingers.