1

INSAL HURRIED OUT OF THE house on his usual route to the school, though not at the usual hour. It was 7 p.m. when he left, having received a call from the school’s security guard. The man’s anxiety and his fretful tone had moved Insal.

The guard said that Insal had to come to school right away. There was a problem he was unable to deal with—a young girl left at school until this late hour—and no one answering when he tried to call: the principal not picking up, the other teachers all protesting that they were too far away and there was nothing they could do, the girl’s father not responding on any of the numbers listed under his name, and the guard unable go home. That the guard had chosen him was, thought Insal, an indication of the man’s desperation—when he said he had tried calling others and failed, Insal believed him. His wife, Leila, hadn’t objected. Go, she told him, go and see what’s going on down there, and if she hadn’t said this so sincerely he would never have gone.

Insal returned home carrying an utterly drained and fast-asleep four-year-old girl. He explained to his wife how there was nothing for it but to take her in, just for the night. Confronted by the girl, Leila hesitated. She felt sympathetic, a sympathy doubtless rendered more acute by the child growing inside her. As mothers do, she had visions of a future: in these, her fetus was now a boy of four, who had for some reason lost both his parents and been adopted by a kind-hearted family. So in the end Leila welcomed the girl with an open heart.

There was a lot of gas in the air that day. People wept. They were frightened, but it was the gas that made them weep. Their tears flowed, their noses ran, and some of them choked. The cops on the ground were teaching the protestors and troublemakers a lesson while the overwhelming majority sat back in their comfortable living rooms, surrendering to great waves of laughter as they watched events on the television, belching idly and indulging in that great pastime: mockery. Who do they think they are, taking on the regime?

By day’s end, everyone who’d taken to the streets had been swept off them. The police deluged them with gas and they took to their heels, and in some neighborhoods the cops charged after them. Many were detained and the rest ran home. Most assumed it was over that night, but no: vengeance had blossomed at last.

No one realized that what had happened and what would happen thereafter was preordained, that the hell they lived in was perfectly normal, was in fact a hell that recurred elsewhere and often, and that all these things were a punishment.

The next day, the world’s illusion was at its most intense. Everyone was taken in. A few thought that deliverance was at hand, but it was a false deliverance, a salvation from stupid things of their own devising. The majority surrendered to the illusion.

Zahra awoke very ill indeed, so sick that Insal called a doctor to the house, terrified of losing this stranger’s child. The doctor reassured him and said that all she needed was two days’ rest and strong medicine.

Insal stayed away from school that day, while the principal kept himself abreast of the girl’s condition via telephone. He informed Insal that he was trying to get in contact with her family, but was having no luck. At sunset, he phoned to tell him what, after much effort, he had managed to learn.

Zahra’s mother was dead and no trace could be found of her father. It seemed that he was either handicapped or unwell. There was no one at her father’s house. The man had vanished, and when the principal asked his neighbors to take the girl in, to his despair they all refused. The principal was searching for other relatives of Zahra’s, he told Insal, and if no relatives could be found then he would arrange to have her sent to a refuge in a few days’ time.

The next day passed without any improvement in Zahra’s condition, but when she woke on the Friday morning she started asking for her father.

That Friday, Cairo caught fire.

As Insal and Leila had been expecting, Zahra filled their home with the sound of weeping. In vain did Insal try to explain to her what had happened—every time he was about to start he stopped: how to explain to her what he didn’t know himself?—and so instead he began consoling her every and any way he could. And he started to lie. He claimed that her father was away and questioned her about her other relatives.

He asked her about grandmothers and grandfathers, about aunts and uncles, but she denied knowing any of them, and when her crying became truly unbearable, Leila brought the interrogation to an end and picked Zahra up, murmuring to her and accusing Insal of getting her worked up.

Leila sensed Zahra’s alarm. The fear of a four-year-old can’t be imagined; it’s a fear that can only be seen and felt, transmitted through a trembling body to adults, where it grows and metamorphoses into a sense of inadequacy and powerlessness. Zahra was in a state of constant and steadily gathering fear that peaked, then climbed higher still: fear on fear. She had no idea what was happening outside, and neither did Insal or Leila. No one knew of the wounded out in the street—and, of course, the dead knew nothing. Yet despite the almost total ignorance from which everyone was suffering, ignorant Zahra’s terror mirrored that of the few who knew the truth.

After hours of crying, and calming, and attempts at feeding, Zahra slept, and husband and wife stayed up, transfixed before the television, anxiously catching up with the latest developments.

Many souls had been claimed that day, and many had been injured by birdshot that stung the skin and lodged beneath it, that could be fatal when fired directly into the face, that wrecked eyeballs whenever it struck them. Everyone thus wounded would think himself a hero. Those who’d been injured and hadn’t died would regard the pellets as a splendid badge of honor, retained beneath their hides, and would see no further than that. A few months later, their wounds would be a mark of shame.

Hope roamed through the crowds in the streets, reaping them, chewing them up, and spitting them back out in a state of joy. They glimpsed only the fringes of their torment and thought it glory.

Three grim days the little family spent without Zahra’s father making an appearance, and the principal concluded that he had been injured, or gone missing, or died. Just one of thousands. Things were more complicated now, and Insal and Leila had a discussion, finally agreeing that they would take Zahra in until a member of her family came to light.

The pair of them spent the three days in front of the television, watching the footage, listening to much talk about the numbers of dead and wounded, seeing the battle unfold between the two sides. As he flicked between channels, Insal thought about the girl’s missing father. The man might be injured and in hospital, lying in a coma, or actually dead, his undiscovered corpse sprawled out somewhere—behind a trashcan, on the roof of a tall building, down a manhole, in a pile of garbage. Maybe someone had taken him to hospital, and he’d died there, and right now he was lying in a morgue. Maybe he’d died on the way to hospital and the ambulance had taken him to the big morgue at Zeinhom. And now he gave a shiver of fear. He’d have to go to all these places and search for him, search for a body or a corpse. He reached out his hand to Leila’s belly, and drew strength from her.