by Donia Kamal
I interrupted him. “Baba, tell you what—I’ve heard enough. Go get dressed, or are you not coming with me?”
“OK, OK. I’m getting up.”
It didn’t take my father long to get ready. We stopped a taxi outside the house and headed to Tahrir Square. My father stared out of the car window, and I wished I could read his mind. What did he think of what was happening? He must have been frightened. His health would not allow him to run if he needed to. But I was not going to let go of his hand; that I was sure of. In all honesty, though, I was terrified. We were facing the Unknown, with a capital U. We had no idea what might happen. There was hardly anyone on the roads except the Central Security forces. The taxi dropped us in Abd al-Moneim Riyad Square. Who were all those burly men? The first scene, not far from us: two of them falling on a skinny young man. I will never forget the sight of that kid under their boots. After beating him senseless, they dragged him to the Central Security van parked under the bridge.
I turned to my father. “That’s it. You’re going home.”
“Oh, you’ve decided for me?” He was driving me mad with his calmness.
“Please, for my sake. It’s only the start of the day, and you can see how it’s going. Tell you what—I’ll take you back to my place. So you’ll be close by, and then you can spend the night with me.”
My father could tell that I was on the verge of hysterics, or maybe he really agreed that his health would not be up to this kind of day. We walked to the bridge and waited for a few minutes for a taxi. I accompanied him to my apartment and made sure he was settled in front of the TV. “Baba, you know where everything is. You can make tea if you want. There’s a chicken in the fridge. Reheat it in the oven when you’re hungry. You need to eat so you can take your medication. I’ll be back tonight. Don’t worry, OK?”
His face was suddenly overtaken with concern. He gripped my arm. “Take care of yourself. I mean it! I couldn’t handle anything happening to you. I only agreed to come back here for your sake. But take care of yourself and don’t be reckless. Run if there’s trouble. Running is sometimes the bravest thing to do, you understand?”
I laughed and hugged him. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a coward anyway.”
“No, you’re not a coward. You can be reckless and unpredictable. But for my sake, you’ll take care of yourself today.”
I smiled as I closed the door behind me and headed back to the Unknown.
When I got back that night, I was pretty much a wreck, so tired my feet could barely carry me. I was covered in dust, and sticky because of all the soda we’d been pouring on our faces to neutralize the pain of tear gas. My long straight hair somehow managed to look like a toilet brush; it was completely disheveled. My eyes, like millions of eyes that day, were red and swollen because of the tear gas. I looked like I had stepped out of the grave.
My father opened the door. “Where have you been, damn you! I was worried sick!” He pulled me into an anxious hug. “Are you OK? Do you have any injuries? Did something happen to you? Tell me!”
“Baba, just give me a minute to breathe. I can hardly stand. I’ll tell you everything.”
I threw myself onto the small sofa and began to tell my father about the day.
“After I left you I decided not to take a taxi. I walked to the Opera House and into a massive demonstration. I marched with them. The chants were amazing—loud and powerful and full of defiance. Anyway, we got to Qasr al-Nil Bridge. There was constant tear gas, coming from all directions. It nearly blinded me. At first I rubbed my eyes, which made them burn more. The more they burned, though, the angrier I became and the more determined I was to go on. So, we were at the bridge. Then all hell broke loose. If only I knew where they were shooting from. It seemed like the gas canisters were dropping from everywhere. Everywhere. Five or six at a time, the bastards. I couldn’t control where I was going, but was just being carried along with the crowd. Everyone seemed to be pushing in the opposite direction of the bridge. I had no idea what was going on. Were we trying to cross the bridge to get to the square? Were we trying to turn back because there was no way to cross? I couldn’t move. So I breathed in the tear gas and chanted.”
I went on, watching the changing emotions on my father’s face: “Some people were starting to lose it. A boy who looked about eighteen was trying to break one of the lampposts on the bridge. Then someone else stopped him and said that was public property, and the boy broke down crying. By that point, the Central Security cars had blocked both ends of the bridge. I thought that was it. It was obviously a trap. I can’t swim, but thought about jumping into the Nile anyway. All I could think of then was that I could not possibly go on. I was never going to make it to either end of the bridge, and it was blocked anyway, so what was the point? I could hardly see anything. Some kids had started to set fire to the Central Security vans. I won’t lie. I was really scared. I thought the vans would explode once they’d caught fire, and if they exploded, the whole bridge would go up in flames.
“Anyway, the vans didn’t explode. But the smoke mixed with the tear gas was so strong. What tipped me over the edge, though, was when some of the boys did not want to let the soldiers out of the vans, and I started screaming, ‘Let them out! Please let them out! We can’t let them die in there!’ It was very dramatic, but the thought had filled me with panic. Those of us who wanted to save the soldiers won in the end, and they let them out. You know, Baba, they were like scared rabbits. They came out with their hands on the backs of their heads like prisoners of war. An escape route was created behind the vans, so that the soldiers could immediately leave the bridge. Otherwise people would have eaten them alive. They’d been shooting at us all day long. All day long we’d been withstanding beatings and tear gas and birdshot, which can cause a lot of damage. Not to mention the live bullets we could hear throughout the day. It was one long horror movie.”
My father asked, “Were you alone all that time?”
“Oh no, I met everyone I know on that bridge. Almost everyone I know was there. But I would see people for a couple of minutes, then lose them. They would run or be pulled away. You don’t get it. It was a massive battle—massive!”
He listened, awed and apprehensive, then said, “I saw things on TV but couldn’t understand what was happening. I had to be out there. I shouldn’t have stayed home like a baby. Fuck this weak health and this weak heart of mine!”
I tried to distract him. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes. What else could I do? I had to take the damn medicine. Go on.”
So I went on: “Once all the vans were burned, things calmed down a little, or that’s what I thought. I left the bridge and met some friends and walked with them toward the square. The sun was setting. Something odd was going on. The security forces were almost nowhere to be seen. The sky was filled with smoke. People were still chanting, and I’ll tell you something—at one point I was leading the chant. People chanted after me, even though my voice was high-pitched and silly.
“I didn’t get to the square in the end. Smoke was coming out of the big building on the corniche, Mubarak’s party headquarters. It was on fire. People were running out of it carrying stuff. I was on the other side of the road. I could hardly stand, but couldn’t walk either. People were carrying chairs, computers, documents, and desk lamps out of the building. Just random stuff.
“And all around me on the street, people made predictions: a curfew, a presidential speech, and all sorts of other things. But I panicked when they said the army was deployed. I mean, shit, the army! Were they going to shoot at us out of tanks now?”
“Yes, I saw the tanks and armored vehicles on TV. My heart nearly stopped.”
“Keep that evil thought away,” I said, waving away the bad omen. “I wanted to run, you know. I mean, Central Security vans and guards and officers—we can handle those. But the army! I had only ever seen armored vehicles at the Sixth of October Museum! Anyway, for some reason people decided to deal with the situat
ion like it was a wedding or a mulid festival. They started running toward the tanks, climbing on top of them, hugging the army soldiers, and chanting for them! I didn’t really get it, but my feeling was that people were so scared and tired they decided to embarrass the army into friendliness!”
The TV droned on with the news as I told my story. I was quiet for a few moments, then realized I didn’t have the strength to tell any more. I had seen a lot of blood that day. I didn’t share all the details with my father. I didn’t tell him about the boy’s blood that, while a bit fainter now, still stained my clothes. I was close to him when he fell, and it was no stray bullet that hit him. I did not want to touch him. I did not want to touch the blood. But he almost fell into my arms. He was already dead. The bullet had gotten him in the chest, in the heart, I’m not sure, but he died immediately. His blood was on my clothes. That was all I worried about. My heart was beating all over the place. A bystander had lifted me off him, shouting, “The boy’s dead! The boy’s dead, you dogs!” This wasn’t the first dead boy, but he was the first whose blood stained me. I crawled away on my hands and knees and stood up at the edge of the crowd. I visualized throwing myself into the river, but I didn’t do it. I had to get back to my father. I had to tell him what I had seen and reassure him that I was OK.
I didn’t throw myself off. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t.
15
I read a lot about the prison years in the sixties. Most of that generation of intellectuals spent about five years in detention, in what my father called the 1959 roundup. Leftist intellectuals and, of course, Muslim Brothers, and others who had nothing to do with anything. My father was among the naive ones who managed to get arrested again after they were released in 1964, in what he called “the more famous political roundup.” He was reluctant to speak about it, yet when he did, it was always with the same smile. Prison nostalgia: a longing I never understood. I would draw the details out of him, trying to imagine what the cell looked like, how he slept, what he wore—trying to erase from my mind all clichés about prison. Did he wear a blue uniform like we saw in movies? He never told me. His stories were always about his fellow prisoners. I was a child and knew none of the names he mentioned.
But one story I’ve always remembered is that of Fouad Haddad, who wrote poetry. He slept in the top bunk and would hang upside down so my father would see his head from the bottom bunk. Hanging there, he stood his poetry on its head too: He always wrote the last lines of a new poem first. That story amused me. My father, on the other hand, was sad when he wrote. He rested his forehead on one hand while he wrote with the other.
When I sat on his lap, he would put his arm around me and keep on writing. Sometimes he would give me a kiss; sometimes I would scribble on the paper he was using in order to get his attention. He would laugh and say, “Scribble all you like. Rip up all the papers you want. That’s what I had you for. You rip away and I start again.” I would go quiet and watch him write, then climb down and go to my room.
I was deeply saddened when Abd al-Wahhab died. I thought I would mourn him alone. No one else in our home cared much for him. In all honesty, I didn’t like him on a personal level; I just liked the stories he shared and responded to. But then I was surprised when I found my father crying bitterly. He never read Abd al-Wahhab’s column, so why was he crying? I asked. He looked at me with annoyance: “It’s Abd al-Wahhab the musician who died, Nadia! Not Abd al-Wahhab Mutawei who writes the agony column!”
“Oh,” I replied, “the ‘Nagwa’ guy?”
“Nagwa” was the title of a poem that my father had listened to Abd al-Wahhab sing on a daily basis for years. The word means an intimate conversation, but it can also be a woman’s name, so I—not understanding a word of the poem back then—assumed it was about a woman.
If the sad night holds me, I am moved by Nagwa
It must have evoked a certain memory for my father. It’s a depressing poem that Abd al-Wahhab makes even more depressing in song. He must have been really moved by Nagwa. So it was that Abd al-Wahhab who died when I was nine years old, and not the one who entertained me with other people’s problems in the newspaper. Later, I would of course regret that short-lived relief, when I really discovered Abd al-Wahhab and became even more obsessed with his songs than my father was.
16
My teenage years were difficult. There was no one I was close to. I stood on my own two feet and pushed everyone away. Even my father. Most probably I was beginning to understand the problems of our home around that time; the painful silence between my parents, for instance. The love story that my father often retold with a bitter smile was present in my memory. My mother told the story too, blaming herself at every other sentence.
“I married your father against my mother’s wishes and paid the price. She was right. As you see, he does nothing but sit at his desk all day. He doesn’t even utter my name any more. I should have married a teacher or a lawyer. They would have at least talked to me.”
She always complained about my father’s silence, that he was constantly preoccupied by his papers and books, that he hardly spoke to her and didn’t involve himself in trivial household matters. Years and years later I understood—despite my difficult relationship with my mom, who used to say that I was “spoiled like my father”—that sometimes a woman needs a man who goes grocery shopping with her and argues with the vegetable seller over a few pennies for a kilo of potatoes. He was a cultured man with a superior intellect, as she used to say, but he never talked to her.
My father didn’t talk to me either during my teenage years. He was sometimes affectionate with me, reluctantly. I knew he was feeling affectionate when he called me “Nannous.” I would smile and say I was too old. Then he would put on a deep frown and say, “What do you mean too old? You’ll stay a little girl forever, even when you’re a hundred years old. Too old! You’ll always be my Nannous.” So I would surrender and go sit in my father’s arms as he went on reading, with a smile on his face. Other than that, I lived inside my own personal bubble. I would put on the headphones of my Walkman, a pretty red one that my father’s friend had gotten for me from the US. I would turn the volume up to its maximum and listen to rock music. The loud rhythms and guitar shocked my mother and soothed me.
I listened to Guns ’N’ Roses and Metallica and Bon Jovi, but also to ABBA, which my father liked. I knew the words to “Chiquitita” and would sing them when he could hear me so he would know I was no longer a child. I was listening to the same songs that a grown man like him liked. I listened to Nagat and Sayed Darwish and Mohamed Fawzy, and to pop music, and I knew all of Michael Jackson’s songs by heart. I put on black nail polish and pretended to look like an American rock chick, but was let down by my long straight hair. A true rock chick’s hair was curly and messy. I listened to everything. I knew Munir’s songs by heart and didn’t see any contradiction between that and standing before the rock star posters in my room, holding the broom as a guitar and head banging, or being moved by the sensitive Abd al-Halim, by the story of his illness and by his tender, almost pity-arousing, voice. I hardly ever took my headphones off, despite my mother’s yelling and my father’s reproachful looks, both urging me to turn the volume down a little.
No one understood me. Every teenager has the right to feel that way. I was completely alone. I didn’t like my schoolmates and daydreamed about the school collapsing on their heads, killing everyone but me and Radwa.
Radwa was my only friend. She understood me and approved of the Slash poster that had pride of place on my wardrobe door. Radwa knew me, and we did everything together—we were silent together, skipped school together, read trashy novels together, and hated everyone together. I liked going to Radwa’s house, and Mom let me go as often as I liked, because Radwa was clever and got good grades and “if only you could be like her.” I went over to Radwa’s on weekends to listen to rock music—which she didn’t really like but listened to for my sake—and eat fries that her father ma
de for us, and browse her little home library. I would usually bring a few books from my little library—or rather my father’s, which he let me share—and we’d swap. She also had a little gerbil that she bought at a pet shop in Heliopolis. She would say mysteriously that it was her guinea pig, then add with affected innocence, “But I wouldn’t do any experimentation on him. I wouldn’t want him to die.” Her mother hated the gerbil and hoped he would escape, but was too disgusted by the animal to open the cage it lived in.
The main difference between Radwa and me was her passion for science. She did really do some silly experiments at home. She would steal things from the school’s laboratory, buy strange liquids, put it all in test tubes, and stare admiringly at the colors and vapors. I thought she was insane, until she ended up as a successful surgeon at a big hospital on the other side of the world. She was strange: she not only liked physics and chemistry, but also got excited about surgery.
So I put on rock music tapes in the little cassette player next to the balcony in her room and painted my nails black, while she poured liquids into test tubes. Then we both read stories and hated the world together.
My mother died when I was fourteen years old. She died suddenly. The doctor from the public hospital next to our house wrote “heart attack” on the death certificate, but that’s probably what all doctors write when they have no real explanation. I didn’t cry, which was normal for me. I never cried, not as a child nor as a teenager. My father didn’t let me attend the washing of the body. He thought it was too much for a girl my age, and I didn’t insist. More than anything I was curious about my father’s reaction to my mother’s death. He surprised me, as usual, by crying silently at her burial. I didn’t understand why he cried. I was sure he had stopped loving her ages ago. His tears confused me. I had seen him cry in silence once before, while poring over his papers. But seeing him cry on the day of the burial was more confusing and left me nervous and distressed.
