same steam as last time. “Why?”
“Do you have anything better to do?” He had me there, the cad. I had no one in this country, no one else I’d kept in touch with over the years. My parents were back in the States with my little brother, scrabbling for citizenship. If I passed on Tahrir, I’d have to while away the day in empty coffeeshops while the rest of Egypt messed around without me. I didn’t like missing out. I acknowledged this fact out loud and got dressed under Youssef’s triumphant smirk. Before we left he rummaged through his backpack and fished out a belt with a heavy steel buckle in the shape of a skull; one of the ones we used to wear in eighth grade when heavy metal was social lubricant. He held it out, buckle dangling.
“It’s really not my style.”
“Self-defense. They search us for knives and batons, but if you get into trouble just wrap it around your hand like so.” He demonstrated. “Let the buckle hang and smack the offending party on the head. I call it the Flail. Patent pending.”
I stared at him for a moment, not sure if he was serious. Knives? Batons? What had they been getting themselves into? He read my uncertainty and rushed to reassure me. “It’s just keda, in case. Nothing ever happens but just in case…”
In the interests of expediency, I latched it around my waist and grabbed the other backpack he offered. A quick search yielded snacks, water and a flare gun, the latter again ‘just in case’.
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I was wrong. I was unquestionably, undeniably, full-heartedly wrong about Tahrir. It wasn’t a shallow shell of the January 25