“Honestly.”
“Where will we go?”
“France.”
She screamed and clapped her hands like a child. Then she said, joking slyly, “But you just pull yourself together and watch out for your health so you don’t flake out on me there. That would be a real mess!”
When she laughs, the muscles of her face contract, sweat stands out on her forehead, and she looks somewhat wild and strange as though she’d been taken by surprise by happiness and decided to grab it hard so it couldn’t get away. Zaki took her in his arms and whispered, “Okay? Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
He started with her hands. He began kissing her fingers one by one, then moved to her palm and arms and full, smooth chest. When he reached her neck and raised her thick hair to take her lovely small ears in his mouth, he felt her body burn with desire beneath his.
It started with a whisper. “Whisper” is the right word — a very slight sound that came suddenly and then was cut off while Zaki was devouring Busayna’s lips in a heated kiss. Seconds passed while they embraced, and then the sound was repeated, clearly this time. The door to the room in which they were sleeping was open and it came to Zaki’s mind in a flash that someone was moving around in the reception room. He leaped up naked from the bed and Busayna let out a high-pitched scream, leaping to put her clothes on any old how over her naked body. Then followed terrifying, nightmarish scenes — tense moments that Zaki and Busayna would never forget. The light went on in the room and a uniformed police officer appeared, police goons behind him. Dawlat came forward from among them, a malign, gloating smile on her face. In a moment her voice was raised, high-pitched and hateful as death: “Scandal and shamelessness! Every day bringing a prostitute and spending the night with her. Enough filth, my good man! Shame on you!”
“Shut your mouth!”
Zaki shouted this in his first reaction. He had gotten over his astonishment and appeared extremely agitated, his whole naked body shaking and his eyes bulging with rage. Unconsciously he put out his hand to take his pants, shouting as he put them on, “What’s going on? What’s this farce? Who gave you permission to enter my office? Do you have a warrant from the prosecutor?”
Zaki shouted this in the face of the young officer, whose features from the start were hostile, and who replied in a calm, challenging tone, “Are you teaching me how to do my job? I don’t need a warrant from the prosecutor. This lady is your sister and lives with you and she presented a complaint against you for practicing indecency in her house and requested an official inspection as she’s bringing a case for sequestration against you.”
“Nonsense. This is my private office and she does not live with me here.”
“But she opened the door with her keys and let us in.”
“Even if she has a key, it’s my office, in my name.”
“Then you can prove that in the report.”
“Prove what? I’ll see you get hell! You’re going to pay the price for violating the sanctity of people’s homes.”
“The sanctity of prostitutes, if you want the truth!” cried Dawlat, her eyes staring, and she moved toward him warily.
“Shut your mouth, I tell you!”
“You shut your mouth, you dirty old man!”
“Silence, madame, if you please!” shouted the officer at Dawlat, faking anger to mask that he was on her side. Then he turned to Zaki and said, “Listen, mister. You’re an old man and there’s no need for unpleasantness.”
“What exactly do you want?”
“We’ll just make our inspection and take a couple of words from you.”
“What’s to be inspected? Tell me you’ve been put up to this. That lizard put you up to this.”
“You seem to be a rude person. Listen, because I’m telling you for the last time. Give yourself a trouble-free evening.”
“You’re threatening me. I just have to talk on the telephone and I’ll teach you your place.”
“Is that so? Okay, I apologize,” replied the officer furiously. Then he said, “Come along, momma’s boy, down to the station, you and your prostitute.”
“I warn you not to use words you’ll be held to strict account for later. And you don’t have any right to arrest us.”
“I know whether I have the right or not.”
The officer turned and said to his goons, “Bring them.” The goons had been waiting for these words like a secret code and fell on Zaki and Busayna. Zaki resisted and started uttering threats and shouting in protest, but the men grabbed him firmly, while Busayna screamed, beat her cheeks, and pleaded with them as they dragged her outside.
In the beginning Taha felt constrained, but this went away as the days passed and as he got used to the camp’s strict regime — rising at dawn, performing the prayer, reciting the Qur’an, breakfast; then three hours of nonstop, demanding exercise (physical fitness and martial arts). After this, the brothers gathered to take classes (jurisprudence, exegesis, Qur’anic sciences, hadith) given by Sheikh Bilal and other scholars. Afternoons were devoted to arms training. The brothers would board a large bus (on which was written Turah Cement Company of Egypt) and go into the heart of the mountains where they practiced shooting and making and using bombs. The camp’s rhythm was exhaustingly rapid and Taha had no time to think. Even in the hour set aside for chatting, after the evening prayer, the conversation of the brothers usually turned to discussion of religious issues, during which the legal proof for the infidel nature of the regime and the necessity of fighting and destroying it would be presented.
When the time came to sleep, the brothers separated. The married ones went to the family dwellings at the foot of the mountain, while the bachelors slept in a small building set aside for them. Only then, after the lights had been extinguished and silence reigned, would Taha lie on his bed in the dark and recall with total lucidity the events of his life, as though an amazing, illuminating energy were suddenly released from his memory, and he would see Busayna el Sayed and be overwhelmed with tenderness. Sometimes he even smiled as he remembered their good times. Then anger would sweep over him as her face contemplated him for the last time and she said contemptuously, “It’s over between us, Taha. Each of us goes his own way.” All of a sudden memories of his detention would rain down on his head like incessant blows — the beatings and the abuse; the feeling after each occasion on which they violated him sexually that he was weak, exhausted, and broken; his breaking into tears and pleading with the soldiers to stop inserting the thick stick into his body; his soft, stammering voice when they told him to say, “I’m a woman” and then beat him again, and again asked him his name, to which he would reply, in a dead voice, “Fawziya,” causing them to laugh loudly, as though they were watching a satirical film. Taha would remember all that and lose his ability to sleep. He would stay awake, re-opening his old wounds. His face in the dark would crumple, his breath speed up. He would gasp as though running and an intense hatred would possess him which would not abate until he thought of the voices of the officers, categorizing, distinguishing, and storing them away carefully in his memory. After this a desire so burning that his body almost shuddered with the pressure would sweep over him, as he hankered for revenge and pictured himself exacting exemplary punishment from those who had tortured and violated him.
This thirst for revenge took him over and drove him on, so that he made amazing strides in the camp’s training exercises. Despite his youth he learned to beat many who had greater experience of physical combat than he, and within a few months he excelled at using regular rifles, semi-automatics, and automatics, and had learned how to make hand grenades easily and well. His rapid progress amazed all the brothers. Once, after he had completed a shooting exercise in which he had missed only one out of twenty shots, Sheikh Bilal came up to him, patted him on the shoulder, and said, his eyebrow scar twitching as usual when he was excited, “God bless you, Taha. You’ve become a crack shot.”