The Cairo sky was crisscrossed with planes day and night. The incredible thing was that daily life in houses, offices, shops, and markets carried on as usual, even though planes were screaming incessantly overhead and explosions kept going off. People still thought that the bombs were not falling indiscriminately, but there were many rumors of casualties. They carried on as usual, but death was looking down at them from a nearby window; its harbingers flew into their ears and it intruded into their innermost thoughts. The city was turned into an army camp; convoys of armored vehicles and trucks moved along the streets, and normal life was drowned in a sea of thoughts and misgivings.

Inayat Hanem came to live with her daughter in Dokki till things settled down. At night, the world looked as it had before history. They gathered around the radio in the house; their mouths felt very dry and they hoped that listening to the voices of the announcers and the national songs would help to relieve the dryness.

The explosions and gunfire carried on like street vendors’ cries. Eventually the old lady’s eyes began to wander and lost their color. She clutched the rosary in her palm as though it were a lightning conductor. Qadriyya broke down as quickly as her mother, and her robustness was of no help to her. Her languid eyes lost their look of majestic apathy. The discussions at the United Nations emerged from the radio like air for a suffocating man. The tales from Port Said followed and they began to grieve.

“Can we stand up to the English and French?” Qadriyya asked in a moment of alarm.

“Port Said is fighting back,” Isa replied anxiously, “and the world’s in a state of revolution!”

“They’re all talking, and we’re being hit!”

“Yes. What can be done?”

“There has to be a solution,” she shouted nervously, “any solution. If there isn’t, my nerves will be destroyed.”