The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz

square, and his soul left his body right there. The man’s friends chased Mahfouz for ages and none of his fellow guards could help him, because the battle had gotten so chaotic. They surrounded him on the bridge, there were so many of them and he was all alone, so he jumped into the water, afraid they would catch him, and drowned.
    Mahfouz’s name didn’t appear on the list of Righteous Guards released by the Gate; but he must have been omitted accidentally, because his superiors and Commander certainly recognized him as a hero. Shalaby proudly announced that he’d come to request honorable recognition for Mahfouz, and a Special Pension Permit for the grieving family who should be appropriately compensated, with, for example, a contract giving them the land the owner was threatening to evict them from. Shalaby fell silent for a moment, then declared that his cousin deserved to be named a war hero—no, a martyr!—which was also what the man he’d killed deserved to be called.
    Yet amid his tales, Shalaby didn’t mention—because of respect for the dead, his own reserve, and the idyllic image he had proudly painted—that Mahfouz had made a mistake or two. The last time was when the world turned upside down and he was tasked with guarding a hospital. Mahfouz said he’d struck a deal with a patient suffering from a bad liver to spend the night with her. But then she screamed out infear, and when the doctors and nurses on duty arrived to find him at the edge of her bed, about to take his clothes off, they grabbed him and dragged him outside. He fought back, saying she wanted him, saying she was the one who called to him from a window in the empty ward, and when they couldn’t calm him down they tied him up and informed his unit. That was where the Commander found him—bound with rope in the medicine storeroom. Shalaby also didn’t tell Ines or Um Mabrouk what happened next: that the Commander ordered Mahfouz to strip off his clothes and stand naked as the day he was born, while he blasted him with a hose and beat him with shoes and whips for disobeying orders.
    He was supposed to have followed the orders he’d received before mobilizing toward the hospital, orders to stand on the mark the Commander had drawn on the ground, just like his fellow guards, and keep a safe distance from the sick ward. They told him not to abandon his post, under any circumstances, for any reason, but his lust for this woman had overpowered him. He was young, after all, and these things happen. Mahfouz was spotted later that day with his head hanging low, his bushy beard brushing against the hair on his chest. He groveled at his Commander’s feet, saying again and again: “Do what you want with me,
ya basha
, I’ll obey, sir, I swear.” But Mahfouz was
mahzouz
—lucky—that it didn’t go to trial and he wasn’t summoned to the Gate. The woman wanted to protect her reputation, and in the end she didn’t submit an official statement. Shalaby smiled, remembering that just a week after this incident Mahfouz survived that horrible accident, when their transport vehicle caught on fire and eleven of his fellow guards died. And then when the barracks collapsed with everyone inside, Mahfouz had emerged fromthe building without a scratch. But luck had betrayed him that final time during the Events, and now he lay like a stone at the bottom of the river.
    Um Mabrouk lamented the loss of the young man and comforted Shalaby, patting him on the shoulder as tears filled her eyes. She had a sense that such a tragic situation was the perfect opportunity for her to tell her own story, about her daughter, and thereby win a bit of sympathy, but Ines seized her chance with an outburst, objecting to Mahfouz being called a martyr. She found herself opening her mouth without thinking again, and casting aside all virtues of silence, caution, and restraint. It was as if she’d left them all outside the classroom door and sauntered back into her Arabic