too, but not before leaning down and giving me a soft kiss on the cheek.
“He doesn’t mean it, any of it,” she murmured into my ear. “Take care of our friend until the morning.”
I asked her to text me when she got home safe. She said she would. Then she was gone.
I was still fuming, but the kiss and the liquid honey of her voice had soothed me somewhat. Youssef had had no such respite and stamped angrily around the houseboat some more. When Amm Attia returned with the medical supplies, Youssef couldn’t contain his temper. He yelled at the old man to tend to the wounded Englishman and then to find him some hash before retiring to a corner to sulk.
“I’m sorry Ammo, it’s a trying time,” I said to the old man as we wrapped Benjamin’s various cuts and bruises. We doused everything in iodine and did the best we could resetting his crushed nose. “You know Youssef, he can’t handle pressure.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he said. His old hands were nimble with the bandages and even his stitches were decent. He’d obviously done this before. I stopped myself wondering where. “I was in Tahrir myself today. I saw my brothers at the height of their glory, but you stay watchful, Avvocato. They can’t control this power they have. This freedom, this recklessness. We are not ready.” With that he left me to prowl his alleyways and find the hash.
***********************************************************
Ismail’s concerns, he insisted the next morning, were purely those of security, and we believed him less and less as his arguments unraveled. Sabah bandaged Benjamin’s battle scars on the floor in the balcony