and before I knew it, I was surrounded by the raging current, which swept me out into the street. I shouted along with everyone else, 'Long live Sa'd! Down with the Protectorate! Long live independence!' I was carried from street to street until the English attacked us and opened fire'.
She would be so alarmed she would weep, hardly able to believe he was still alive. She would recite many verses from the Qur'an as she shuddered.
'A bullet went by my head. I can still hear its drone ringing in my ear. People were bumping into each other like madmen. I would have perished with the others if a man had not pulled me into a store'.
His daydreams were cut short by loud, sporadic screams and footsteps rushing past in confusion. His heart pounded, and he looked at the faces surrounding him. He saw that they were staring at the door with an expression suggesting they expected to be hit on the head. Uncle Hamdan went to the door and leaned down to peer out the gap at the bottom. Jumping back, he quickly lowered the door until it was flush with the ground. He stammered in confusion, 'The English!'
Many people were shouting outside, 'The English!.. The English!'
Others called out, 'Stand firm… stand firm'.
Someone else yelled, 'We die, but the nation lives'.
Then for the first time in his short life the boy heard shots fired nearby. He recognized them instinctively and shook all over. When the women let out a scream of terror, he burst into tears.
Uncle Hamdan was saying in a shaky voice, 'We proclaim that God is one… one'.
Kamal felt afraid, and a deathly chill crept throughout his body from his feet to his head. The shots kept on coming. Their ears were assailed by a clatter of wheels and a neighing of horses. Voices and movement were heard in extraordinarily rapid succession and then they were joined by roars, screams, and moans. To those crouching behind the door, a fleeting moment of combat seemed an eternity spent in the presence of death. Then a frightening silence prevailed, like a swoon following an onslaught of pain.
Kamal asked in a hoarse and trembling voice, 'Have they gone?'
Uncle Hamdan put his finger to his lips and murmured, 'Hush'. Then he recited the Throne Verse from the Qur'an (2:255) about the omnipotence of God.
Kamal recited another verse about God, to himself since he no longer felt able to speak. 'Say: He is God, one, only one'. (Qur'an, 112:1). Perhaps this verse would drive away the English as effectively as it drove away the jinn in the dark.
The door was not opened until the noon prayer, when the boy ran out into the deserted street and dashed off like the wind. Passing by the steps leading down to Ahmad Abduh’s coffee shop, he noticed a person coming up whom he recognized as his brother Fahmy. He rushed to him like a drowning man grabbing at a life preserver. As Kamal grasped his arm, the young man turned in alarm. When he recognized his little brother he shouted at him, 'Kamal?… Where were you during the strike?'
The boy noticed that his brother’s voice was so hoarse it was hard for him to speak. He replied, 'I was in Uncle Hamdan’s shop. I heard the shots and everything'.
Fahmy told him quickly and hastily, 'Go home and don't tell anyone you met me… Do you hear?'
The boy asked him in bewilderment, 'Aren't you coming home with me?'
He replied in the same tone, 'Of course not… not now… I'll return at my usual time. Don't forget, you didn't run into me at all'.
He pushed him away, leaving him no opportunity for discussion. The boy galloped off until he reached Khan Ja'far Alley. There he saw a man standing in the middle of the road. He was pointing to the ground and addressing several others. Looking in the direction he was pointing, Kamal saw red splotches in the dust. He heard the man say, as though delivering a funeral oration, 'This innocent blood screams out to us to continue the struggle. It was God’s will that blood should be shed in the sacred precincts of al-Husayn, the Prince of Martyrs, to link our present trials to our past. God is on our side'.
Kamal was terrified. He turned his eyes away from the bloody ground and ran off like a madman.
56
In the early morning darkness, Amina was groping her way to the door of the room cautiously and deliberately to avoid waking her husband when she heard a strange commotion coming from the street that sounded like the droning of bees. At this, her usual time to arise, she normally heard only the clatter of garbage carts, a cough from someone heading for work early, and the shouts of a man who liked to break the pervasive silence after he returned from the dawn prayer by crying out from time to time, 'Proclaim Him one'. She had never heard this strange commotion before. She was at a loss to explain it and curious to learn its source. She walked softly to the window in the sitting room that overlooked the street. She raised the cover of the peephole and poked her head out. She found it was dark with a glimmer of light at the horizon, but that was not enough for her to be able to see what was happening below her. The commotion grew louder and more mysterious at the same time. She could hear human voices of unknown origin. As her eyes became slightly more accustomed to the darkness, she looked around. Below the historic cistern building on Palace Walk and near it at the intersection of al-Nahhasin with Qirmiz Alley she could make out indistinct human figures, as well as things shaped like small pyramids and other objects like short trees. She stepped back anxiously and went downstairs to the room Fahmy shared with Kamal. Then she hesitated. Should she wake him up to solve this puzzle for her or postpone it until he woke by himself? She could not bring herself to disturb Fahmy and decided to wait until the normal time for him to awaken at sunrise, which was not far off.
She performed her prayers and then went back to the window, driven by her curiosity. She peered out. Rays from the rising sun were beginning to adorn the gown of night. The light of morning was streaming off the peaks of the minarets and the domes. She was able to see the road much more clearly. Her eyes examined the shapes that had alarmed her when it was dark. She could see what they really were. A moan of terror escaped her, and she stepped back to rush to Fahmy’s room. She woke him without any hesitation.
The young man shuddered and sat up in bed. He asked in alarm, 'What’s wrong, Mother?'
Trying to catch her breath, she replied, 'The English are filling the street below our house'.
The young man jumped out of bed to run to the window. Looking down, he saw a small encampment on Palace Walk under the cistern building at a vantage point for the streets that branched off there. It consisted of a number of tents, three trucks, and several groups of soldiers. Adjacent to the tents, rifles had been stacked up in groups of four. In each bunch the muzzles leaned in against each other and the butts were separated, forming a pyramid. The sentries stood like statues in front of the tents. The other soldiers were scattered about, speaking to each other in a foreign language and laughing. The young man looked toward al-Nahhasin and saw a second encampment at the intersection of al-Nahhasin with the Goldsmiths Bazaar. There was a third encampment in the other direction at the corner of Palace Walk and al-Khurunfush.
His first impulse was to think that these soldiers had come to arrest him, but he soon decided that was silly. He attributed the idea to his rude awakening, from which he had not quite recovered, and to his sense of being followed that had not left him since the revolution had broken out. Then the truth gradually became clear to him. The district that had frustrated the occupying forces with its continual demonstrations had been occupied by troops. He went on looking through the blind, examining the soldiers, tents, and wagons while his heart pounded with terror, sorrow, and anger. When he turned away from the window he was pale and muttered to his mother, 'It’s the English, just as you said. They've come to intimidate people and to stop the demonstrations at their source'.
He began to pace the room back and forth, while he commented to himself resentfully, 'Incredible… preposterous'.
Then he heard his mother say, 'I'll wake your father to tell him about it'. The woman made that statement as though it were the only alternative left. She implied that al-Sayyid Ahmad, who solved all the problems of her life, was equally capable of finding a solution for this one and of guiding them to safety.
Her son told her sadly, 'Leave him alone until he wakes up at the normal time'.
Terrified, the woman asked, 'What are we going to do, son, with them stationed outside the entrance of our house?'
Fahmy shook his head anxiously and repeated her question: 'What are we going to do?' Then in a more
