.


the voice of freedom

.

It's Friday and he finishes early, because Fridays are not busy days, and he likes to be alone. He takes his motorcycle and puts on the black helmet, and Malik Nam is just another man trying to squirm past the traffic jams and carts and street vendors, trying not to stand out because he wants the piastres in his pocket to remain in his pockets.

He drives past hotels and gardens that expose, through exuberance and luxury, the open veins of a country that struggles with transformation, trying to catch a wisp of a wind of change. Malik sings Sout Al Horeya with a passion if he's asked to, but he is still juggling with his own private revolution to have the heart to become involved in a public one. He looks forward with determination, at the road ahead, and pretends he doesn't see the crammed slums and the people that wander the dirt streets like lost souls. Pretends there is no filth and no discarded propaganda flying around, only sand, sand like there was when he was a child that snook out to watch the stars over the Valley of Kings, many kilometers away from Cairo and social injustice.

The driveway is less flashy in the outskirts, flanked by ivory-colored houses, protected by ivory-colored mosques.

The Nile flows green and sovereign towards the delta, that fans out on its way to the sea shortly after the city finishes.

He takes off his shoes, rolls up the cuff of his trousers. Gets into the water, and his toes sink in the soft, dark lime.

.

.

It's spring and he finishes early, because the world outside the tomb is alive and the heat is still bearable, and he walks up the stone steps and leaves in silence, because he never speaks much. He has too much to learn to bother with words, words are always empty.

The horse they got in Luxor waits for him with sweet patience as he quickly checks the saddle and mounts, and he is off, cutting through the wind like a genie of the sands, like a figure out of the Arabian Tales.

Inside the tomb, Rishid sets a cup of tea before a familiar stranger, and Shadi takes it and nods.

"You've outdone your duty," the man of the desert says, "Now, you are a Tomb Keeper, and a Keeper of Souls, too."

Rishid only smiles, humble.

The sun sets behind his back, and Dark Malik looks to the east. The Nile and the riverbank beyond are becoming aflame with sundown; scents rise, a symphony of crickets and waterfowl. All around him, life, even if he cannot always see it.

Life.

He hardly knows himself any longer, although he is still calming down. He stays there until moonlight makes it all silvery and indigo and enticing, like a distant memory he has: the Valley of Kings awash with starlight.

He hears his horse trampling in the shallows, stirring awake fireflies that drift skywards out of the lush reeds. Even in the growing shadows of the night, life.

Dark Malik sighs, transfixed.

He takes off his papyrus sandals, looks up at the moon. Gets into the water, and his toes sink in the soft, dark lime.

.

.

.


A/N: Fast update! My muses are lovely.

I don't mean to offend people from El Cairo for talking about things like dirt and petty theft. I only want to show what life would be like for our characters. I guess my only excuse is that I also live in a 3rd world country and know what I'm talking about :P I was, though, inspired by the movie 'Slumdog millonaire' and the Egyptian band Cairokee, which I have already mentioned (see chapter 7)'.

Thanks for the beautiful reviews, guys :)