October 6, 2013I gazed out the windshield. Our car windows hummed with the vibrations of the city. Baba steered us down Ramsis Street, and the noise crested like a wave. In my chest, a drumbeat. A hundred meters away, black banners whipped in the afternoon breeze, emblazoned with ﻳﺴﻘﻂ ﻳﺴﻘﻂ ﺣﻜﻢ اﻟﻌﺴﻜﺮ. Chant leaders sang it and swayed, “Down, down with military rule,” and the crowd, all the way to the other end of the street, reciprocated the call, fists punching the air.
Baba parked the car and refused to move any closer, the intersection a final divide between us and the protest. I stole a glance at him. His hands clutched the steering wheel, tense as he eyed the masses ahead. He glanced through the window to his left at each passerby racing to cross the street and join. His blue-and-white checkered shirt hugged his wide shoulders. When he shook his head at the sight before us, his short beard winked a white that vanished before you could catch it, a subtle prelude to his fifties, fast approaching. Trimmed like the borders of a homeland, it concealed soft pits in a face the color of damp Aswan earth, a softer shade of which I inherited.
Baba had no desire to be near the protest.
I, on the other hand, belonged nowhere else.
I wound down my window, pulled out my phone, and zoomed in. The silver of the phone caught the glint of Cairo’s afternoon sun. I opened the car door and stepped outside for a better angle. The percussion of chants and marching drums washed over me. “Down, down with military rule!”
Baba yelled at me, his voice strained: “No! Inside, now! This is too risky.”
I rolled my eyes but got back inside the car.
Switching my phone to video mode, I stuck my arm out of the window and continued shooting, a grin across my face.
“Put your hand inside,” Baba said, and I groaned. Baba followed Mama’s instructions to the letter, and the budding revolutionary inside me seethed. Wasn’t it enough that I remained cocooned inside the car like a coward?
A few minutes passed, then chants outside rose, urgent. Protesters’ fingers jabbed toward the street behind us, from which we had approached just minutes earlier. I twisted around and my breath caught in my throat. Armored police vans and trucks, their tires screeching against the asphalt, bore down upon us. Masked soldiers in navy blue camouflage, stationed at turrets on top of the black-and-white vehicles, trained the muzzles of their guns in our direction.
Gunfire split the air. Baba yelled at me to pull my arm inside as he turned the ignition key, but I was already recording the advance of the police forces. We had barely been there five minutes when the onslaught began.
“They’re firing live bullets!” I cried.
Twisting in my seat, I thrust my arm out the window, steadying the camera on the unfolding chaos. Though terrified, I thought of how I’d post it later to my social media for the world to see, and the rush of capturing such vivid footage electrified me.
Our car crawled forward, meters away from the crowd, toward the intersection with Soliman El- Halaby Street. Baba’s hands clenched around the steering wheel; he was ready to floor the gas pedal the moment we turned, leave the congested heart of Cairo behind.
The car door flung open. Someone grabbed my hoodie and dragged me out. A hand wrenched the phone from my grip, and another flattened my face onto the asphalt.
One of my attackers kicked a basketball injury from two days prior, still fresh: an opponent’s sharp elbow to my rib cage. My skin-and-bones frame had left it exposed. I lay splayed out on the ground before the car door, faintly hearing the shouts amid waves of nausea. “Terrorist! Ikhwan! Traitor! Shooting videos for Al Jazeera!” And from afar, a voice soothing like a lullaby despite its alarm: “He’s my son! He did nothing wrong! You’re hurting him!”
Mama said don’t leave the car. Mama said Baba will protect you.
The police had no regard for Mama’s rules, I learned, as the Arms pulled me up again, and a slap rattled my skull. I tasted blood; my braces slit the inside of my right cheek and upper lip.
Nothing will happen, I thought as the soldiers hauled me away. Like a wave they carried me, feral as the ones Baba hurled me into as a child. He’d laugh as I thrashed and gasped for air, shrieks skipping across the sands of Alexandria’s beach. How our chests heaved with laughter when he caught me. I’d pinwheel in the water, snorting salt until my sinuses burned, but I never thought to fear. Baba would scoop me up at the last moment and carry me on his back.
The boots, the fists, the sobs, the yells—none of it was happening. They couldn’t hurt me.
Baba was coming.
Copyright © 2026 by Abdelrahman ElGendy. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
