Eighteen Days of Spring in Winter Read Online Free PDF

for my apathy or ignorance. I was clearly naïve and self-engrossed, despite telling myself I was current and informed. For some reason I made the choice to turn a blind eye. I am not sure why; fear, blame or perhaps I am being too generous in my assessment of myself to admit I really didn’t care all that much. But I did care, I do care.
    It was that morning, sitting at my laptop, when I realised all the little signs warning me something was wrong amounted to something very real. Something I could no longer obscure my vision of with an outstretched hand as I often did in taxis on seeing a street child inhaling from a brown paper bag. I felt superficial and shallow. I felt I had lied to myself for so long. I had built a defensive wall around me, made up of those lies, and finally admitting the truth did not guarantee an escape. So I did the only thing I know how to do. I read. I read for what seemed like hours; a self-education that was probably already too late.
    A few hours later I heard the key in the front door. Returning to my previous position against the wall I watched my family come in. My brother with his shoulders dropped, collected from school before gym class, my father shepherding them inside and double locking the door as though expecting the demonstrators to camp in our living room. And my mother looking flustered, but still in control.
    ‘You’re still in your pyjamas Sophia?’ she asks, more shocked at my appearance than being collected from work by my father like a school kid.
    ‘What’s going on outside?’ I ask, indicating to the living room bay windows. The world out there feeling so far away from the world in here.
    ‘Nothing unusual,’ my mother replies. ‘What would be going on outside except the usual chaos?’ she continues, the dig at my father obvious to everyone.
    ‘Can I go out?’ I ask no one in particular.
    ‘No!’ my father snaps almost before I’ve finished the question.
    I approach the subject from a different angle. ‘Why are you all home early?’
    ‘Your father insisted we come home. I am not sure what we are supposed to do for the rest of the day stuck in here. I had to cancel my afternoon appointments,’ my mother rattles on, the question giving her the perfect platform to express her discontent.
    ‘What do you want me to do?’ my father asks her. ‘Shall I not worry about my family, not try to protect them? Shall I let them run around the city when the city is about to be turned on its head?’
    ‘Of course you should darling,’ she says soothingly, ‘but look around you, this city is already on its head, it was born on its head. Look outside, everything is the same. People are still going about their normal business. Why should we lock ourselves in our home like we have something to fear when everyone else is just carrying on. It is not us who should be scared.’
    ‘I am not scared for myself, Fatima,’ my father replies, feeling the dent in his masculinity. ‘I fear for my children, for you. We have to be careful. They say people are coming into Cairo from the countryside by the truckload. Do you know what those fellaheen are like? They are feral, undomesticated.’
    My mother smiles at this self-hatred, but says nothing. My father was born in the countryside.
    ‘I read the protesters come from all walks of life,’ I say, refusing to drop the subject. ‘They are not hooligans from the country, though some of them might be. The internet says people from different backgrounds are expected to attend; families, school children, young, old, teachers, doctors …’ I trail off.
    ‘Who is this Internet that it speaks? Is it a person?’ my father asks, clearly irritated now. ‘I don’t care what the Internet or anyone else says. Until we know exactly what is happening we stay at home. Until I know it is safe I don’t want you,’ pointing his long surgical finger at me, ‘in a taxi or ata mall or anywhere near university.’ I see from the corner of my