know that you took everything I had on me.’
‘Do you have any cash?’
‘I have some,’ the girl said as she fumbled around in her shoes. ‘How much do you want?’
‘Give me five hundred pounds – quickly!’
She handed me a five-hundred-pound note. I crumpled it up in my hand and went out to where Somaya was crouching, continually repeating, as if there hadn’t just been a conversation, ‘He hit me – hit me. You lied. If it weren’t for you, el-Sirgani would have torn him apart.’
I put the note in her hand and said, ‘It’s for you alone. I told you the guy has a certain character. Only don’t get el-Sirgani involved in this. The guy may ask for your services again today or tomorrow, and he’ll pay what you want.’
‘I’ll stick my neck out for you!’
She felt her neck and this superficial, foolish joke seemed to delight her, and she began to laugh without interruption. Then she blew the contents of her nose onto the ground and departed.
Don’t deny that I’m good at dealing with difficult matters. She’ll come back, asking for more; blackmail is a game for anyone whose soul has gone rotten, but I hope the guy and his girl will have returned to their world before then.
2
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the last census to be held, there were thirty-five million Egyptians living below the poverty line. Unemployment, which reached its highest global levels, stood at ten million. Note that 78 percent of those committing rape were unemployed: that is to say, the crime of rape is really a crime by an entire class of society. Not to mention, of course, the dissolution of the middle class that, in any society, plays the role of graphite rods in nuclear reactors: they slow down the reaction and, if it weren’t for them, the reactor would explode. A society without a middle class is a society primed for explosion.
That is exactly what happened, but the explosion didn’t do away with the wealthy class. It decimated what remained of the middle class, and turned society into two poles and two peoples.
Only the wealthy class realised that there was no life for it unless it became completely isolated, following the same logic behind medieval castles, when rulers would hold decadent parties while pestilence decimated the sea of poverty outside.
The Masqueof the Red Death
– where did I read a story with that title, and when? And who wrote it? I don’t remember…
I’ve read a whole lot. I’ve read everything. Until the letters dissolved into each other, and until I ended up not belonging to the Others and not belonging to Utopia. In every situation, I am strange, different, peculiar, foolish, uncomfortable and unintegrated.
Was any one of them capable of preventing this?
I don’t know. I’m not an economist or a politician. Besides, I haven’t received a formal education, since I enrolled at the free university of life.
But there had been some terrifying indicators, and everyone should have taken notice of them. When you smell smoke and you don’t warn the people around you, then in some way you’ve participated in lighting the fire.
When I look over the newspapers of the first decade of the century, I smell a whole lot of smoke. The newspaper pages reek of smoke. So why didn’t anyone do anything?
Because everyone colluded against us.
Everyone colluded against me.
One day, I will die, and I’ll come back to haunt them in the guise of a demon or a ghost, and I’ll make their lives hell. None of them will be safe, no matter how much they try to hide from me.
But I won’t kill these two.
The guy from Utopia was sitting down, not doing anything.
‘You’re here eating my food and sleeping under my roof,’ I said to him in an imperious tone. ‘So you have to try to earn your daily bread.’
He gave me a challenging look. I could tell he wanted to tear me apart, but he was completely at my mercy. That’s why he wasstaying silent. If he possessed one respectable
‘Do you have any cash?’
‘I have some,’ the girl said as she fumbled around in her shoes. ‘How much do you want?’
‘Give me five hundred pounds – quickly!’
She handed me a five-hundred-pound note. I crumpled it up in my hand and went out to where Somaya was crouching, continually repeating, as if there hadn’t just been a conversation, ‘He hit me – hit me. You lied. If it weren’t for you, el-Sirgani would have torn him apart.’
I put the note in her hand and said, ‘It’s for you alone. I told you the guy has a certain character. Only don’t get el-Sirgani involved in this. The guy may ask for your services again today or tomorrow, and he’ll pay what you want.’
‘I’ll stick my neck out for you!’
She felt her neck and this superficial, foolish joke seemed to delight her, and she began to laugh without interruption. Then she blew the contents of her nose onto the ground and departed.
Don’t deny that I’m good at dealing with difficult matters. She’ll come back, asking for more; blackmail is a game for anyone whose soul has gone rotten, but I hope the guy and his girl will have returned to their world before then.
2
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the last census to be held, there were thirty-five million Egyptians living below the poverty line. Unemployment, which reached its highest global levels, stood at ten million. Note that 78 percent of those committing rape were unemployed: that is to say, the crime of rape is really a crime by an entire class of society. Not to mention, of course, the dissolution of the middle class that, in any society, plays the role of graphite rods in nuclear reactors: they slow down the reaction and, if it weren’t for them, the reactor would explode. A society without a middle class is a society primed for explosion.
That is exactly what happened, but the explosion didn’t do away with the wealthy class. It decimated what remained of the middle class, and turned society into two poles and two peoples.
Only the wealthy class realised that there was no life for it unless it became completely isolated, following the same logic behind medieval castles, when rulers would hold decadent parties while pestilence decimated the sea of poverty outside.
The Masqueof the Red Death
– where did I read a story with that title, and when? And who wrote it? I don’t remember…
I’ve read a whole lot. I’ve read everything. Until the letters dissolved into each other, and until I ended up not belonging to the Others and not belonging to Utopia. In every situation, I am strange, different, peculiar, foolish, uncomfortable and unintegrated.
Was any one of them capable of preventing this?
I don’t know. I’m not an economist or a politician. Besides, I haven’t received a formal education, since I enrolled at the free university of life.
But there had been some terrifying indicators, and everyone should have taken notice of them. When you smell smoke and you don’t warn the people around you, then in some way you’ve participated in lighting the fire.
When I look over the newspapers of the first decade of the century, I smell a whole lot of smoke. The newspaper pages reek of smoke. So why didn’t anyone do anything?
Because everyone colluded against us.
Everyone colluded against me.
One day, I will die, and I’ll come back to haunt them in the guise of a demon or a ghost, and I’ll make their lives hell. None of them will be safe, no matter how much they try to hide from me.
But I won’t kill these two.
The guy from Utopia was sitting down, not doing anything.
‘You’re here eating my food and sleeping under my roof,’ I said to him in an imperious tone. ‘So you have to try to earn your daily bread.’
He gave me a challenging look. I could tell he wanted to tear me apart, but he was completely at my mercy. That’s why he wasstaying silent. If he possessed one respectable
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