TheI have a painful headache and I feel my head is going to explode… my head is crumbling… and my sight is smothered with darkness. Sounds blend in my ears becoming dull and blurred. High screams cut through saying something that I remember as being my name… I feel that I have lost my memory and forgotten everything … the movie of my life doesn’t have any scenes. All the frames are blacked out and deleted.

The doctor says:

• Your blood pressure has spike sharply.

Pressure!! Pressure!! I’m only 25 year, not very old…

• You should take two of these pills daily, only two because they are very strong.

Two pills! My desire to sleep is so intense that I feel I cannot drag my body out of bed and if I do get up, tiredness will pull me down again.

– These pills make me even more sluggish.

The bus comes so I gather my strength and leave. I drop my body on the high seat at the back of the one class bus after being pushed towards it by the crowd… I take out my cigarette box, light one and hold the smoke in my chest. My organs are disintegrating… things are spinning in circles inside my head, is this cigarette a drug?

The bus conductor yells:

• Tahrir 

I change my mind about getting off, needing to sit down and rest. The snug seat is seductive and the bus’s vibrations are soothing… I look at the bus conductor who takes some banknotes from his pocket and starts counting them. I start counting with him: ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, … two pounds, one twenty five cent note, … two five cent coins. A shiver passes through my body so I close the window on my right. My eyes follow the successive lights of the road. Then I see myself getting ready to jump quickly… the door is in front of me… the bus conductor to my left. My saliva is overflowing, my heart beats muffling all other sounds, the door of the bus opens and the bus starts off again to leave the stop. The bus conductor wraps the banknotes and wants to thrust them back into in his pocket… he places the pen behind his ear, as he usually does, after counting the money. My hand sneaks to the roll of money in his hand and snatches it. I throw myself out of the closing door, which nearly catches my arm. I start running as fast as I can while the conductor yells at the driver to stop but his voice is lost in the traffic.

Mr Shehata’s looks surround me even before I get to his office… they beleaguer me, stabbing my neck like needles… I sit on my seat and ask for coffee. Mr Shehata’s head is bent over his notebook, he glances between me and scribbled notes through his thick glasses… I say to him in a clear, confident voice:

• Mr Shehata: I will see you in the afternoon to give you the thing!.

The man obviously understood.

– How did you manage to get the money when you are going through such hardship?!!! And really, if I did not need the money I wouldn’t have demanded it from you.

The bus is after me, chasing me…I try to go down one of the alleyways but I stumble … the eyes of a circle of people are all wide open staring at me, the bus conductor seems to be strangling me… a policeman is making his way through the crowd to get to me… the gun at his side moving, pointing at me… at my head and a loud voice breaks out with a vicious shake that blurs the bodies into one wave and throws them in the direction of the driver. If it wasn’t for the fact that I am holding on to the metal arm of the chair, I would be falling but my cigarette does drop out of my hand and flies away.

• All praise is due to Allah… Allah has saved us. A boy was running in front of the bus.

The voices of the passengers are mixed with some praising Allah and others cursing the driver for his dangerous driving, except for me- I was repeating within myself: May Allah disgrace the Satan.

Yesterday I was walking down the road thinking of a weird wish because of my worries… I started to cross the road and noticed a car heading towards me… I ignored it despite the fact that it was so close, only a few meters away. My heart stopped beating … my legs stayed still; I closed my eyes, the image of Mr. Shehata fading away from my mind and his words ringing at the back of my head.

– It is only circumstances that pushed me to ask you to repay the money… the children, going back to school, Ramadan, Eid… I wish you many happy returns of Eid.

– Mr Shehata didn’t have one head now but many and it was as these heads were bobbing in the ocean, diving then floating then diving again and all of them were looking at me and shouting each having a long hand extended to me with very long fingers with sharp claws made of iron all directed at my chest… I felt my breathing stop and the glaring light of the car suddenly dazzled me and I was shaken out of my nightmare by the screeching sound of the brakes.

– Drunk!! May Allah destroy your houses! 

I get off the bus and walk discreetly along the right side of the road away from the glaring light that envelops the wide Salah Salem Street. I walk on the pavement along the fence and realize that the feet of Mr. Shehata will not be familiar with this road. How would he reach it when he lives in Sayida Zainab Area and his movements are limited to the mosque and his house in Birkat Alfeel.

I open the door to my flat and go in. My wife is in the living room with a newspaper in her hand, next to the radio which is playing a song by Om Kalthom.

– Why are you late?

– Tired… my headache is still banging

I get changed feeling so tired… then I go to the bathroom to perform ablution and don’t hear her anymore. I lay the prayer mat down but can’t pray standing so I sit down. My brain is going to crush… to crush… I feel that I am carrying a painful mountain on my neck which I have to raise then lower during my bowing and prostration. 

– What’s wrong with you? You don’t usually pray sitting down

I don’t have the energy to talk to her. I feel distressed that I can’t even talk to my wife.

I went today to my manager who granted me a week’s leave, a week I spend at home in my bed… my wife’s facial features are mixed in my vision but I still can tell the permanent smile drawn on her face. I felt she was elated listening to the song.

You are truly the only thing that gives me the power to bear this life… these worries… and this tiresome life that people endure here in Cairo.

I met my wife when I was at university. I saw in her a beautiful, peaceful and bubbly girl who would make me feel content. She saw in me the young man who stood out among his peers with his masculinity and superiority,  so she said. A strong love brought us together for which I sacrificed many things and had to bear more burdens… ouch… my head. And despite my love of my wife, she doesn’t take it easy on me… she wanted our house to be furnished like modern houses from before we got married.

– but darling people do things a step at a time and you know the junior employee and his small salary and how his burdens get bigger because he decided to get married early as I did.

– And what would people say about us if they came to visit us? Would they find our house naked like this? No chandeliers, no curtains, and no décor? I am not less than them.

– Don’t worry; everything can be easily done for your sake.

Everything was easily done thanks to debts… the headache… each pulse of blood into my head seems like a strike by an iron hammer, crushing it… I feel my bed moving… spinning…. Going up… coming down…. The features of the room are lost and the corners mixed… exhaustion is crippling my limbs. Drops of cold sweat gathered on my forehead… quietness suddenly besets the place and I find my wife standing by my side with the newspaper in her hand and signs of sadness on her face.

-Look our colleague Saied Abouelftouh is in the obituaries!

– Saied… Saied Abouelftouh…!

Twenty four years, 16 of which spent in hard work and hustling in education… he had not yet tasted the sweetness of life after all of this struggle… time didn’t give him a chance… it didn’t… it didn’t… is it possible for death to be standing so close to us as if it is our shadow? I cried helplessly… Saied is no longer among the living … You will not see him again. The last time was a week ago.

He was saying to me, full of hope, that he was thinking of getting married once his younger brother had finished his studies and could bear the responsibility of the house in his place. Times are deceitful!

My hands reach out looking for my cigarette box. I fold the pillow, rest my head on it and light a cigarette… my wife, next to me, her features grow grimmer… there was nothing left in the room other than smoke, silence, and sorrow. My eyes linger on the rings of smoke going up towards the ceiling around the light… my heart is shrinking… I had a strange idea … yesterday I visited my aunt and saw one of my friends who I hadn’t met since graduation and we sat together in Tahrir Square talking about the past. My aunt who I haven’t seen for the last six months… I found my legs leading me to her absentmindedly… I don’t know why I felt that I was yearning to see her… was this the goodbye visit? Is Saied Aboutelftouh really dead? 

I’ve had enough of the cigarette so I put it out and bury my head between the folds of the pillow.

In the morning my wife tries to wake me up as usual but finds me stiff with extreme cold settling on my limbs which are covered with strange yellowness… she screams out… my mum and sisters come, shocked. My mum cries silently and my sisters wail… the alarm goes off and I spring petrified looking around and unable to recognise where I am with nothing on my lips other than the word No No which I was saying fearfully, the marks of dried tears still around my eyes. My wife wakes up upset from her sleep.

• What’s up?
• May Allah make it good.

I pulled my short cover on my feet and felt stings of coldness flow in my body.

My leave days go by without my leaving the house and I feel my wife’s dismay which makes her face look perpetually angry… her words with me were few and growly.

• Are we going to stay imprisoned like this we don’t even go out to breathe fresh air?

I grow bored of meeting people; actually, I dread it… I feel that they are only eyes and their stares are all gathered on one pupil… which is me… with long arms holding on my throat… where is the safe road that I can walk without any human fixing me with his stares… Mr. Shehata, even if he doesn’t ask me for his money, every twitch gives him away… his movements and words which he throws here and there loop around my neck as if they are rings of metal.

In the evening and before tomorrow arrives when I have to go back to work again it is time for medicine… the packet has one blister pack with ten tablets in it… before I go to sleep, the pack is on the floor… completely empty.