Free Eighteen Days of Spring in Winter by Saeida Rouass Page B

watching?’ he boomed. Another rhetorical question and Mustafa looked like he wanted to answer, but decided it was better not to.
    Then my father stormed out of the house and banged on the door two doors down. A man slowly opened it. ‘Dr Ahmad, something wrong?’ he asked with an innocent smile.
    â€˜Yes, there is something wrong. Where is the patrol schedule?’ he asked, stretching out his hand demanding a paper trail. The man looked at my father’s hand like he didn’t know what to do with it. Shake it? Twist it? What?
    â€˜We decided the patrol wasn’t necessary today,’ he offered as a meek explanation.
    â€˜We?’ my father asks.
    He stormed back into the house, slamming the door. ‘We?’ he asked us, the word refusing to sink in. ‘How can this country have a revolution if it’s still “We”? We can’t agree on anything. We try to establish a neighbourhood watch which is beneficial to everyone and by the end of the first week it has fallen apart.’ He said this dropping his hands to his sides, as though a weight dropped from them. In my imagination that weight rolled along the floor and stopped at my feet, waiting for me to pick it up and carry it on my shoulders.
    â€˜And what about you Mustafa? Are you not part of the neighbourhood?’
    Mustafa affirmed that he was indeed.
    â€˜So why was nobody watching? Why are you under the stairs? Is it enough for us that you are under the stairs?’
    I wished he would stop asking so many questions. Everything he said, he said in a question. I could see Mustafa moving to answer the questions, but not being able to keep up, not knowing if he even should.
    My father sat down on the armchair. And Mustafa awkwardly pulled his legs from off the sofa to leave.
    â€˜Where are you going?’ my father noticed.
    â€˜I should go,’ he replied. ‘Thank you for your help, but I don’t want to bother you. Thank you.’
    â€˜Are you crazy?’ my father exploded again. Mustafa sat back. ‘Did you just not hear what I said?’
    My mother leaned into Mustafa and put her hand on his arm. ‘You will stay here with us,’ she told him softly.
    â€˜Of course he will,’ my father announced. ‘I can’t let him out there to face those thugs on his own.’
    I wondered if he was talking about the three men that beat him or the neighbours.
    Later we all calmed down. Mustafa settled as best he could, conscious of the fact that he took up the whole sofa in a family home. Still, not totally relaxed because intruding into afamily’s home is considered very rude, even if you have concussion. Of course he wasn’t intruding, but it was difficult for him to not think that.
    We all drank sweet tea again. My father had a whisky. He drinks sometimes, but very rarely, usually when he thinks he has earned it. My mother doesn’t drink, she used to but stopped when she became pregnant with me. Mustafa stuck with the tea, not because he didn’t drink, he probably did and could have done with a double shot. But the offer to share whisky was too hospitable for him. He didn’t want to disrespect my mother. My father accepted his offer of abstinence with grace.
    â€˜Who can we trust?’ my father asked us all, us all knowing it was directed at Mustafa.
    â€˜How can we have a revolution if we can’t agree on a simple thing?’ repeating his question from earlier, the whisky making him turn philosophical once more.
    â€˜But we can agree, Dr Ahmad,’ Mustafa said. ‘We all agree Mubarak must go.’
    My father nodded a few times, ‘We seem to only be able to agree on what we don’t want.’
    Eventually we all went to bed. Mustafa was given a pillow and blanket and we all put our cups in the sink and made our way to our rooms.
    I slept well that night.

XVI
Egypt’s love
Tuesday 8th February
    I awoke the next morning to the front