The next day was Thursday, the last day before the weekend. I jumped out of bed and looked out of my window. I am not sure what I expected. Boarded up shops? Smashed glass, looters carrying televisions down the street? I sat back on my bed and felt ridiculous. Ridiculous for my overactive imagination and ridiculous for my opted ignorance. The street was no different, the bowab still sat on his plastic stool grabbing conversations with residents as they walked by. The middle-aged lady in the building opposite still sat at her window chain smoking. The fruit seller continued to sell his fruit on the corner. I saw my father step out onto the pavement on his way to work. I went to open my window and call out to him, but stopped myself.
Sitting on my bed, I put on my glasses and looked around my room. My room has always been my room. I have always lived here. It has never been a room that I have shared with anyone, no one has left their imprint on my bed sheets. The walls tell a story. If you spent time alone in my room and looked around, slowly taking in details, the history that has been made here would eventually show itself to you.
It was here when I first heard my mother cry.
I sat alone and heard her crying through the walls and my father’s muffled voice comforting her. I have often wondered why she cried. I didn’t know at the time. As you grow older you add fact to memory. I have convinced myself she was crying because of the death of her mother. That is what my historical mind tells me. But sometimes I catch myself wondering if she cried because of a loss of a baby. A baby she almost held in her hands. I don’t remember a baby so I don’t know why I have that thought. I have come close to asking her a few times and then backed away from it. I want her to remain my mother for as long as possible and not become a woman with her own history and battles.
The room tells of other things of course. Of a young princess waiting for her knight in shining armour. And it tells of that princess turning into a young girl and realising that fairy tales were not great because of the ‘happy ever after’, but because they end at the perfect moment. If you visited that princess ten years later no doubt she would have two spoilt children dragging behind her and be carrying extra weight. Holding resentments for pinning all her hopes on one man because he turned up on a stupid horse to rescue her from one hell only to plunge her into another. Her cage may now be gold plated, but it is nevertheless still a cage.
It tells of the young girl becoming a well-read young woman, sitting right now in her pink pyjamas on a bed scattered with soft toys from a different era.
A study desk sits in the corner, the only space that speaks of today.
I will always be grateful to my parents for giving me this space.
The noise from outside my bedroom door is beginning to bear down on my unexpected good mood.
Slowly, I open the door and peer out. It was always crucial to exit at the right time. I open the door just as my brother comes rushing towards me. He is whining. I straighten my back and march past him. My mother is behind him, her hair almost wild, one shoe on with her arms slightly raised. There is power in the arm raise, like she is about to cast a spell on the whole house. She looks insane. I walk straight past her too. I can feel her watching me.
In the kitchen I slowly pour a glass of milk, the noise now on the other side of the apartment, giving me a precious few more minutes peace. I stop to listen for a few seconds.
Suddenly I hear them coming back towards me. I sit down at the breakfast table and drink my milk. My mother barges in. ‘Sophia, he lost his gym shoes and he says if he can’t do gym class he won’t go to school.’
No hello, no good morning.
‘Where did he lose them?’ I ask calmly.
‘I don’t know, that’s why they are lost,’ my mother retaliates.
I give her a look, one she knows well. ‘Careful’ it says, ‘don’t snap so early, you know what happens when you do that.’
My mother takes a calming breath. ‘OK, sorry,’ she says through her exhale.
I smile, indicating for her to go on.
‘He said he left them outside the front door last time. They are not there, we have looked everywhere.’
‘Saleeem!’ I call out.
He comes huffing into the kitchen. ‘Did you look under your bed?’ I ask.
‘Yessss,’ he says with irritation in his voice.
‘Don’t be rude,’ I say. ‘If you want my help be nice.’
He lowers his eyes to the floor, shoulders dropping.
‘Go and look in your room behind the door where you probably left them last time. I knew there was a funny smell coming from there.’
He goes and looks, coming back with his gym shoes in his hand. My mother gasps in horror. ‘If you knew why the hell didn’t you just tell me?’ she snaps.
I laugh. It amuses me that after tolerating my brother’s tantrum all morning she snaps at me five minutes after I have gotten up.
She barks at Salem to follow her to the car and they march to the door. She turns back and looks around the kitchen. I lean into the fruit bowl and hand her the car keys. She stares at the car keys with disgust and seems to consider walking to school as a way to retain some dignity. Snatching the keys, she marches away again. Just before she leaves my vision, she turns to me. ‘There is some French toast in the oven for you,’ she says.
‘Thanks, mama!’ I say, smiling.
And the rest of the day is mine. My timetable this semester gives me Thursday off. Everyone says I struck gold because I have a three day weekend. But actually, Thursday is my reading day. It’s the day I hang out at home, in silence. I often spend the morning catching up on emails, social media etc. I usually have an early lunch, made without a sound in the kitchen, and spend the rest of the afternoon working on assignments and reading.
I take my French toast to the bedroom and throw myself on my bed, my door left wide open. I lie there for a while chewing on the toast, wondering what if I choked and was found by my mother nine hours later, mouth open, a bit of French toast she made with love lodged in my windpipe. And then I stop telling myself stories.
Looking over at my laptop, I decide to read and grab a book from under my bed. The slow internet can wait. Puffing myself up to a more comfortable position, I place the plate next to me and open the book.
I stayed like that for over an hour. Leisurely reading. One of the great things about literature is that you have to read fiction for your studies, giving you the perfect excuse every time. ‘Why are you reading romantic nonsense Sophia?’ ‘It’s for my studies, baba.’ ‘Oh, well … OK carry on.’
At some point I hear a noise coming from the open living area. My father is standing there inspecting the furniture like he has just walked into the wrong house.
‘Baba?’ I ask, confused.
‘Where’s your mother?’ he asks with an urgency that concerns me. I stand up from my leaning position against the wall. ‘She took Salem to school and then went to work,’ I answer. It’s Thursday, he knows this, it happens every day except Friday and Saturday.
He looks at me, taking in my pyjamas and book in hand. He comes over to me, placing his hand on my cheek and says ‘Oh OK, nothing’s wrong. I am popping out and you just stay here. Don’t go out, just stay at home.’ With this he pats my cheek one more time and walks towards the door.
After he leaves I almost run to my laptop to switch it on. Now I am not an idiot. I know my family well enough to know that if nothing was wrong, he would scream at me not to go out if he didn’t want me to. It would be an order, one that my mother might be able to soften later, but an order nonetheless. The fact that he tried to break it to me gently that nothing was wrong means clearly there is something wrong.
Grabbing my laptop and taking it back to the bed, I turn it on. And there it is.
The Day of Rage.
The wording was aggressive. A whole day of rage. Is it uncontrolled rage? Lashing out rage? Or is it suppressed rage? Rage ready to blow? The ambiguity was in some ways a direct threat.
And the date selected could not have been more perfect. Tuesday the 25th of January, the day the nation commemorates its police force, celebrates their duty and honours them. Egyptians from Alexandria to Aswan were planning to take to the streets to protest against that very same force, the thugs of the establishment. It was, in fact, genius.
People had been talking about such a day for a long time. It had been bubbling, but lots of things had been bubbling. Knowing which had bubbled over and which had simmered down was not easy. We had heard students were organising themselves, teachers, nurses and the average man, woman and child on the street, but no one actually displayed any rage to my knowledge. And now the whole country was going to do just that, bare its teeth, show its rage, fight not flee on January 25th. Five days from now.