Radical Read Free Page B

in search of unsuspecting victims to stab. But this is the first time I’ve been the “Paki” in question. We’ve been set up. Mickey and his bomber-jacket crew, for all their front, are just local youths like us. These skinheads are in a different league: big men, built like brick shithouses, in their twenties, tooled up and ready for action. There’s a glint of a blade in the street lights as they climb out of the van. Some are carrying clubs with nails hammered in the ends. If they catch us . . .
    My friends all have the same idea as me: we need to move fast. My blade! I think, as I hear them tearing down the street. I’ve gotta ditch my blade! If they find me with it, they’ll think I’m up for a fight. My only chance is if I can prove I’m not strapped, try my luck, see if they’ll let me be. I dive into a side alley, duck down, and hide the knife behind a bush. Then I’m out, pelting up the street, in the panic of the moment not sure which way to turn, and—oh shit —I’m surrounded. There’s five, six of them, around me on all sides. Knives, brass knuckles, clubs. There’s the Hitler salute again, pierced by more swearing: Fucking Paki! Fuck off back to where you came from!
    I can feel my fear rising, my adrenaline pumping. The look on these men’s faces can only mean one thing; they know there’s no escape for me now, and so do I. This is it, “ that’s the way the ball bounces. ” I’ve had my skins, blasted my tunes, and enjoyed the good times. Now, I guess I’m just gonna get got . . .

    EGYPT, 2002
    Am I being driven to my martyrdom, my shahadah? I’m bound and blindfolded with filthy rags, packed between other frightened, hapless creatures, sweltering beneath an unforgiving desert sun. Heat and salt. Heat and salt. It’s all I can taste. The sour, putrid smell of fear is thick in the back of the van, reeking from the sweat of those I’m trussed up against, and I’m certain I smell the same to them. Someone to my right is murmuring incomprehensibly: a prayer, a whimper, or just gibberish. The rest are silent but for the sound of their ragged, labored breaths, waiting, waiting for what lies ahead.
    It seems like four hours since I awoke, maybe five. There’s no way to tell. The searing heat could be Cairo, but then again it could be anywhere in Egypt. Allahu a’lam —God only knows. Maybe it will be a bullet in the back of my head. The state security, Aman al-Dawlah, has been known to bus people out to deserted areas to do just that. What a mercy that would be. Quick and easy. Just time enough to read my testimony of faith, the Kalimatain, before I go. Yes, the Qur’an, I must remember the Qur’an. Chapter Ya-Seen will surely calm my nerves. I try recalling the words with all the focus I can muster, but nothing penetrates through the asphyxiating haze.
    And then I hear it, announced with relish as a policeman, a shaweesh, jostles us out of the van and down steps we can’t see: al-Gihaz. The Apparatus. Headquarters of Aman al-Dawlah, notorious in all Egypt for what has been whispered about its dark, underground cells. Many have come out crazed, unable to speak of what they encountered inside; others never come out at all.

    In here I have lost my name. I am now a number. Forty-two— itnain wa arba’een —is what I must remember, and what I must answer to every time it is called. Itnain wa arba’een , itnain wa arba’een , itnain wa arba’een. Everything else is uncertain. I don’t know if I will get down these steps without falling, I don’t know when I’ll be beaten. I have been stripped of defense; my blindfold means I cannot see it coming. Clenching my body in anticipation of the blows is exhausting, but it’s all I can do. The muscles in my stomach and the back of my neck ache with the effort.
    The change in the air tells me I am being shoved