Beetles

 It is the silence in contrast with the noise of my dreams that wakes me. In my sleep I was already there, I had arrived and the city screamed all around me with its daily roar of life. Then I opened my eyes and now I sigh in relief, there is still silence around me, only the whispers of the wind and sand engaged in their eternal dance can be heard.

Being careful not to make any noise, I sit on my mattress, the sheet I wrap around my shoulders is a veil of sadness. All my life I have felt and observed the fine sand rising into the air and turning, turning, turning in elegant spirals. Thinking that in a couple of hours I will no longer have the opportunity to enjoy this little daily spectacle saddens me.

I'm almost jealous, I wish I could forget myself too in an eternal carefree dance like wind and dust that will continue to swirl here forever, they don't need anything else. But we are people, and we need to live to be able to dance, water and food to be able to live. I would never want to leave, but our house is slowly becoming the kingdom of sand and a light wind is gently sweeping us away.

I put my feet in the sandals, the skin of the soles is still cold of night. I would like to be able to lie down again and sleep a little longer, but I would go back to dreaming of the noise of the city that I will hear in a few hours, so I might as well enjoy the last moments of this wonderful silence.

Cairo floats on the horizon like a huge slick of black oil. I looked at that view every day, yet today, for the first time, I feel like I'm looking at the dark bottom of a well and I'm right on the edge, I'm about to fall into it.

I was born and raised on the edge between the capital and the desert and I have always liked looking both one way and the other. Day after day I watched the sun rise from eternal sand dunes and set on the anthill of the city which slowly stopped teeming with the first hours of the night. However, now that I am about to move definitively towards the west, Cairo seems like an enormous chasm ready to swallow me.

I don't really understand whether time has stopped or suddenly sped up, however at a certain point warm desert hands touch my shoulders and my baba's gaze joins mine.

“He's coming” she tells me and I nod. There at the edge of the desert you can see everything, anything that approaches initially resembles small grains of colored sand that slowly take shape. The off-road vehicle climbs the dunes groaning, bringing with it the noise of the city, and I turn my gaze to the other side, to the east, towards the desert, hoping to prolong the silence of home even just for a moment.

My cousin Aadil offered to give us a lift in his big car. He greets us with a loud "Sabah El Kheir", but he is the only one to wish a good morning with so much energy.

In a slow procession we load everything we might need in the city, we leave the rest to the kingdom of sand, it will be in good hands.

I take the last steps towards the off-road vehicle walking backwards, I haven't yet found the courage to leave the desert. I jump when Baba stops me before I can crash, suddenly his hands feel rough and dry.

We set off and with that roar of the engine the fall begins, we speed through the dunes towards the black bottom of the well. We detach ourselves from the edge of the world, now we go to the center. Goodbye sand and wind, goodbye distant landscapes.

Shortly afterwards the sun rises and takes possession of the earth. Today I dislike the eternal sun, which mercilessly steals every drop of water from us and chases us from our home.

Suddenly something shiny dazzles me, I cover my eyes. Baba doesn't seem to have noticed anything, he sits motionless on the seat next to me, lost in the infinite memories of the life he has just left behind. I turn towards him, perhaps to console him, perhaps to ask him to tell me some of those many memories, but I am blinded again and this time I notice something strange. The glimmer seems to come from my father. I narrow my eyes and notice that his skin is covered in a strange greenish glow that becomes almost blue in the sun, his face is bizarrely smooth and rigid, like the shell of an egg.

I turn my head away and ask Aadil to open the window so I can feel some air on my skin. Cairo is a huge pool of boiling oil and as we get closer the heat makes itself felt, I'm thirsty. I force myself to look outside, to distract myself by looking at my beloved dunes, but for some reason they seem unrecognizable, I can no longer distinguish their shapes. It's like looking at a painting too closely, without understanding the subject, I feel like I'm seeing a single grain of sand at a time.

It bothers me, I can’t sit still, the seat is uncomfortable and drenched in sweat. After just a few moments I can no longer hold back and I go back to looking at my baba; everything seems so alienating. This time my father notices me and turns in my direction. My mouth opens in a scream when what is staring at me is not the coffee gaze that I know so well, but rather a pair of round, black, shiny dots: the expressionless eyes of an insect.

“Habibti, what is it?” he asks me and the only thing that makes me understand that he is worried is his tone of voice, his gaze continues to be a pair of little black eyes.

“Nothing” I say, my voice is the dry Nile, “I'm thirsty, my head is spinning,” I try to explain. Baba smiles, his lips are blue, dry and smooth.

“Here,” he says, handing me some water. I look at his hands in terror: rough, thin paws tighten around the plastic bottle.

“Drink something, you'll feel better,” my father repeats to me and his voice seems strangely buzzing to me. I cannot do otherwise, I stretch out my hands towards the bottle and am ashamed of being so disgusted by my baba.

I take a sip of water, the world is turning into a fata morgana, as we get closer to Cairo the images seem to distort more and more, I wish I could escape, run home on the edge between desert and city where you can observe everything clearly on the horizon. I try to relax: I've seen the capital every day for years, I remind myself, there's no reason why it should suddenly look so threatening. Yet even a leopard in the distance can seem like a harmless kitten.

We are more than halfway along the route, I try to concentrate on my breathing, keeping it calm, but the sun now also masters the air, making it heavy, almost tangible. An insistent noise fills my ears, here comes the eternal chatter of the city, but there is one voice that stands out: it is Aadil's. I look out the window and see no houses, or buildings, or people, then I realize that what I hear are not voices, but a loud buzz.

I would scream again, but we are almost at the center of the well and it is dark here, nothing can be clearly distinguished, nothing can ensure that what you see is not just a fantasy in the shadowy theater of your mind. And the scene before me seems to have been ripped straight from the script of a bizarre and frightening show.

My cousin chats happily with my baba, occasionally giving him some benevolent glances from the rear-view mirror, but my father doesn't respond: he buzzes. For a few moments I wonder semi-clearly how Aadil doesn't realize it, how he doesn't see an enormous beetle sitting in the back of his off-road vehicle, then the fata morgana breaks into a thousand fragments and a thousand other splinters and I crush myself against the door of the car.

“Stop! Stop! I have to get out!"

My scream drowns out the other noises like a sandstorm and for a few moments silence finally returns.

We pull up to a petrol station. Aadil asks me if everything is okay, my baba buzzes insistently, and I would like to escape, run far away, climb over dune after dune and return home even if just for a moment to untangle the painful knot that I have in my head, to see the full picture on the horizon.

Instead the only escape I have left is the bathroom. I open the tap and let the cold water run over my wrists and forearms, then I bring my wet hands to my eyes in an attempt to regain some clarity, but I freeze there. The skin on my face is smooth under my fingers, armored, dry. I don't dare move. I remain still with my hands covering my eyes and with the tap open. Breath. It's all just in my mind, I promise myself.

I let my arms slide along my body like water. Breath.

Then I open my eyes and see with horror that the image in the mirror is that of a large beetle with a shiny green-blueish armor, my eyes are two black dots. I also left my body on the border between city and desert, I left my person to the sand and the wind.

I want to cry, but do beetles have tears? I turn off the sink faucet, my little paws sliding on the smooth metal. I don't know what to do, how can I get back out there having suddenly taken on the appearance of an insect? Will Aadil and my baba recognize me? Then I remember that my cousin didn't seem to have noticed the change in my father and that perhaps I had already transformed into a beetle since the beginning of the journey without realizing it.

For the first time in my life I ridiculously ask myself: who am I? It is a question that until now could have remained unanswered, or at least the answer was so elementary as to seem almost obvious. On one side there was the city, on the other the desert, and in the middle there was me, without being either one or the other. It's easy to be human where there are no humans.

I leave the bathroom and return to the car in silence, I'm afraid of making buzzing noises. Nobody seems to notice anything and so we set off again, our fall continues, but now I feel that the bottom of the well is near, I hear the roar of the engine echoing in contact with the buildings of Cairo now close by.

Here we are, I think, here are the desert beetles coming to town.

I no longer look outside, I can no longer distinguish anything familiar, everything is too close, too big, I simply imagine people's disgusted faces when they see two huge insects get out of the car.

My little paws move convulsively in agitation when they stop us and Aadil declares loudly: “Here we are!”

I turn to my father, my little black eyes are reflected in his.

“Here we are,” he buzzes and opens the door. I step out too, ready to hear frightened cries, but then I turn around and am paralyzed: I am surrounded by beetles that swarm all around me in an immense buzz. They are like me and my baba, we get confused with each other.

I scramble together with everyone else while I unload my luggage. I understand that swarming that I saw from afar. I suddenly feel light and empty at the same time, just like the light bluish-green shell of a beetle.

I think of the sand and the wind dancing in my house and how I was used to being as different from them as from the inhabitants of the capital. Now I have reached the bottom of the well, the center, the desert is outside, here there are only people like me. Beetles like me.