Free Eighteen Days of Spring in Winter by Saeida Rouass

300.’
    ‘Really, 300 just today? We are done for.’
    ‘No, since …’
    ‘Since when, Salem?’ I tried to hold back on my anger and not take it out on him, but where else could I vent it?
    He didn’t answer.
    ‘They say the regime will increase pensions and salaries,’ he continued, ignoring my bait.
    ‘Huh, they still think people can be bought. They don’t get it, we don’t get it. Those people, those protesters are here to stay. They are past negotiation. There is only one outcome to all of this.’
    ‘What is that outcome?’
    ‘I don’t know. That’s the point, no one knows. Whatever it is, people have committed to seeing it through without knowing. They have committed to the process come what may. That takes courage, more than we have.’
    ‘You know what I think about the revolution, Sophia?’
    I looked at him. An 11-year old boy consumed with American music and computer games was about to give me his analysis, while I, an 18-year old university student, sulked on her bed.
    ‘No, tell me,’ I softened.
    ‘It has changed everyone. It’s not one revolution, but a collection of smaller revolutions.’
    ‘And?’ I asked, not quite understanding.
    He got up and made his way to the door. Turning to me he said ‘Maybe ours is just the smallest one, the one not being reported.’

XV
‘I was asleep for twelve days’
Monday 7th February
    The next day I continued to mope around the house. I was feeling a little better, but still uninspired. My mother dragged me into the kitchen to help with lunch. My father invited me again on his patrol. I refused. Choosing to hang around in my room waiting for those golden moments when the internet was suddenly working. I watched a bit of television, I avoided my brother. For a kid who packed his bag to join the revolution he seemed to be more absorbed in his own world than before. The revolution seemed to be just information to him now. Bits of information he picked up from the television and the internet when he could. And yet last night what he said made sense to me in some way. Maybe he was just saying what I was thinking. That it’s OK to not be there. That it is possible to be a part of it but not participate. But how? There were people risking their lives everyday, how could anythingI do in my small little world compare? What he talked about didn’t seem like it would be enough for me.
    And it showed in the moping. So I avoided him. I tried to avoid my father too. He was grumpy. I could tell his frustration. My father is the worst person to go on holiday with. After about three days he gets grumpy. He misses being in theatre, operating, it’s where he belongs, where he is at his most relaxed.
    Neither of my parents had been to work. Appointments were cancelled, operations postponed, or relocated where they could be. They became neighbourhood doctors: checking temperatures, blood pressure, sugar levels. Having them barricaded in the neighbourhood meant suddenly everyone’s warts and sores came out of the woodwork.
    My parents often visit sick neighbours. They visit partly because that’s what you do when someone is sick and also partly because the neighbours feel reassured by their comforting words as doctors. That alone would often heal them; a doctor friend saying everything is going to be OK. Now they seemed to do it a lot more.
    By the evening I was also feeling sick. Sick of my room, sick of the lack of Internet, sick of the clothes I was wearing. I regretted not going on patrol with my father.
    We all sat around the living room, all together before curfew. All slouched around the television. It felt like a movie moment. Like there were other people watching us on television wondering what the hell we were doing. We looked a state. We looked like we were living through groundhog day and we had done it so many times we had lost all hope of anything being different.
    Suddenly, we heard a wail. That was different. It wasn’t the