Your country’s awake and you’re asleep. Come to Tahrir! was up next. I hazarded that this was Omar, although I couldn’t be sure. Almost no one else I knew texted in Arabic, except maybe Ismail. Whomever it was had sent the message twice, two hours apart. Once at 9am and another at 11, only a few minutes ago. The last two texts were from a restricted number and said only Don’t come to Tahrir. Cheerful.
I was preparing to stretch my aching back- stiffened from the harsh pressure of the mangy cushions- when a crushing weight landed on my chest. As I focused, the shape extended a hand and stuck a finger in each of my nostrils. I opened my mouth wide, panting for air and swatting blindly when I felt a thick, sweet liquid trickle into my open mouth. I sputtered and bucked the figure off. Youssef arose and collapsed once again, this time in the throes of uproarious laughter. A clatter; a pot of honey fell by his side.
“Your mother was a street dog,” I managed to choke out, on all fours, as the last of the honey dripped to the dirty floor.
“You weren’t answering your phone, so I came over,” he said, as if what he had done was a natural tendency to humans in possession of their full faculties. He stood toying with an errant strand of fabric hanging from a dusty tapestry. The melancholy of the previous night was all but gone. “And now you’ve had breakfast. Get dressed. We’re going to Tahrir.”
I straightened up and stopped to consider. I’d heard things, of course. Filtered through the rose lens of CNN and Al Jazeera, I’d heard that the unwashed masses had taken to Tahrir Square once again, this time protesting the hairy ape of an Islamic despot nature had deemed it necessary to deposit on our doorstep. From what I could gather, it hadn’t quite picked up the