5th November 1997, Cairo, Egypt. 20:15 hrs

Dearest Claymore:

Chéri, I write to you now, in the event that I never see you again.

I have decided to disappear. And how better to disappear than in plain sight? I have become one of the thousands of faceless, ignored, homeless wretches who wander Cairo’s slums and alleys, who pick over the piles of rubbish that choke every empty plot of ground and work the corniche and the other thoroughfares, holding out withered underfed hands to passing motorists, hoping for a few worthless coins. I have never felt so completely invisible, so alone. We are the actively ignored. People literally will us away.

I have found a corner in an empty lot where several other unfortunates have fashioned shelters from old sheets of asbestos roofing, cardboard and discarded plastic tarpaulin. We are all clustered up against the brick wall of a low-rent apartment building in old Giza. My shelter is strangely cosy already, and my neighbours are surprisingly, well, human – friendly and good-humoured and, despite all their various afflictions, as helpful as they can be. What had I expected? A snarling community of animals, devoid of compassion or feeling?

Today, my immediate neighbour, a woman in her mid-thirties with two children under the age of ten, seeing that I was struggling with the roof of my shelter, took the time to help me. I thanked her, and after, we spoke. She spends her days with the Zabbaleen, the garbage pickers of Cairo, scraping out a living for her family. Her name is Samira. She is a widow, like me. And like me, she has known better times.

The canal nearby serves as both latrine and water supply, and the smell is something I cannot describe. I try to stay away. I have three big bottles of good drinking water here in my shelter, and some tinned and packaged food. For a bed, I have three layers of cardboard and an old blanket. It is comfortable enough.

There was another bombing here yesterday, Claymore. This time in Alexandria. I read about it in a newspaper that someone discarded on the street. El Assad, The Lion, claimed responsibility on behalf of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, the same group who perpetrated the attack in Taba a few days ago. Again, the target was a tourist resort. They blew a hotel reception area to pieces, injuring five workers. Again, no tourists were harmed – they appear to have planned it for very early morning.

The Lion released a statement, condemning the wealthy families who control the nation’s businesses and the government, plunder the country’s wealth, and maintain the majority in a constant state of poverty and illness. How can people do such things, Claymore, however just they believe their cause to be? These terrorists are not Muslims. For them, Islam is nothing but a convenient camouflage. They are political extremists, nothing more. These cowards debase themselves and our religion. I burned the newspaper in my evening fire.

Claymore, as I lie here and write this, the flame of my candle flickering on its wick, I think of that first time we were together, in Yemen. It seems so very long ago now, almost a dream, even though it is only three and a half years. Oh, chéri, I cannot describe the conflict that explodes inside me whenever I think of you. And while I know that you will never see this, it helps me to write it, to think that perhaps one day I will understand what is happening to me. I am alone, childless now after two attempts to bring a life into the world. Guilt crushes me, from the inside out. Now that Hamid is gone, I know that I did not love him. I think, now, that I loved the idea of him, a good Muslim husband who nevertheless aspired to the secular and modern, who would let me be my own person, have a career. Please do not misunderstand me, Claymore. I do not mean to imply that you would have sought, if we had married, to domineer me in any way, quite the opposite. Sometimes, back then, when I would contemplate what it might be like if we were to be married – and I did, often – I imagined that as a husband you might actually be too malleable for me, too easily manipulated. I need somebody strong. My father was strong.

Thinking back, I am not sure what it was that kept making me push you away every time you got close. In part, I think, it was that I simply could not imagine a life – the kind of life I wanted, stable and gentle and happy – with you. Your violence frightens me, Claymore, that volatile, unpredictable core that seems to burn so close to your surface. I have seen what you can do, the brutality you are capable of. I know it frightens you too. And yet, how gentle you can be! There are times I have felt as if I could crush you in one hand, like the most fragile of shells. And when, in Istanbul, you told me that you were incapable of love, something inside me let go. I did not believe that it was true, and still do not, as I told you on the phone a few days ago. But the very fact that you believed it made me understand that you were not ready – might never be ready – for me, or for anyone.

Oh, chéri, I hope that going back to South Africa to testify has helped to exorcise some of the terror you carry within yourself. What I do know now, very truly and clearly, is that you are the only man I have ever truly loved. And if God sees fit to bless me with one more day with you, that is what I will tell you.

And if not, if Allah makes it my destiny to wander this earth alone until he chooses to take me to his Grace, I will thank him for the time we have spent together, and for the gift of knowing, if only for a few days, the grace of being truly loved.

Goodnight, my tortured soul, wherever you are.

Yours always, Rania.