There were tracks in the sand, many and intersecting, but who was I to tell what caused them? I saw dark stains soaked into the dust, and prayed they weren’t blood. Was I obligated to picture the horrors that might have played out here, or must I doubt Bahr himself ? A thought no less horrifying at first, but its sting faded as the minutes passed. Hunger pinched, but the light was growing brighter. A breeze I felt as faint hope sprang up and I began to move again.

10

THE HIDDEN HEART

Back home, I tossed and turned, caught between sleep and waking, between life and death.

A truck saved me, one of the huge container trucks transporting water between the desert towns. Peering down at me from his cab, the driver’s expression reminded me of the look on the streetcar driver’s face the day I stood back-to-back with Bahr in Alexandria, but unlike the streetcar driver, this man had braked to a halt, opened the passenger-side door, and motioned me over. I heaved myself up and in and was about to strike up a conversation when I simply dropped out of the waking world.

“If sleep were an ocean, then you’d drown, because you’re heavier.”

That was what Alya used to say.

I’d respond, “I sleep so soundly because you’re here.”

The driver dropped me off at the outskirts of the city and warned me to take care. The troubles had returned and the streets weren’t safe. The authorities had imposed a curfew.

The streets were perhaps a little less crowded than usual, that was all. I chased the fleeing remnants of daylight and bought myself a sandwich from the place outside my building. My blue car sat there, unloved but unstolen beneath heaped dust. Up the stairs to my apartment. I looked through my pockets for the keys and couldn’t find them, so I first pushed on the door, then kicked. Despite the noise, the neighbors’ doors stayed closed. Then mine splintered at the lock and gave way. I went in, propped it shut with a chair, and went to sleep.

The power was out when I woke up. Groping around in the darkness, my hands found the sandwich and I gobbled it down. Feeling my blood pressure plummet I lay back down. Then I tried calling Leila, but I remembered that I hadn’t charged my phone, so I tried my landline. There was no response: from Leila or anybody else. I drifted off again.

The power was still out the next morning. I fetched a stack of loose paper and sat down to write what I’d seen, the paper piling up beside me like I was two people not one, and the hours ticking past, racing me.