The Pleasant Stranger

His days are all the same, he gets up at six in the morning surrounded by the loud chirping of birds in his much respected neighborhood. He approaches the window and takes a deep breath, ready to take on a new day.

Dressed in a shirt that was neither the taste nor that of the class that suited his neighborhood, he gets into his car and takes off towards the very distant and very poor outskirts. He always parks some distance away from the miserably poor compounds however, gets out of the car, and walks the remaining distance towards them. He does so while smiling at every single soul he passes; if he comes across an old man or woman carrying groceries he insists on carrying them all the way to their home, if someone was having difficulty cross the street he would grab their hand and help them, if a beggar confronts him along the way he showers him with money. And every time he helps someone out he walks away without even waiting to hear the tearful prayers to God for him to have the happiest of lives. Instead he merely continues his destination to the bakery.

At the bakery, he stands among the dozens of people all crowded unorganized at a small window in the wall where a lazy rude man hands out bread to the very hungry inhabitants of this very unfortunate society. It was always very crowded, and there was always a limited amount of bread. The people pushed, shoved, and cursed, all trying to reach the window to get bread for the hungry mouths at home that depended on this bread. Occasionally a fight would break out and things would get rough but he goes nowhere, he could stay in the long crowd for hours but in the end he emerges between the bodies carrying hot loaves of bread in his hands. He straightens out his too colorful shirt, and heads to Mr. Adam's home, who was a very old disabled man who lived alone with nothing to support him except the meager pension he received, which was barely enough for him to survive.

The young man enters Mr. Adam's small apartment which was in a severely worn out building, and greets him with the bread he just bought. He makes him breakfast, reads the paper to him, and on the days when his diabetes and blood pressure medicine runs out, he never forgets to have a new supply with him. Finally, after making sure Mr. Adam has all he needs for the day, he leaves towards Mrs. Zeinab.

Mrs Zeinab was a great woman. An old widow, with a son and daughter who were both still in school (their schooling of course, was paid by him). He approaches her and gives her Arthritis shot, then cleans the house, feeds her chickens, and buys her the vegetables she needs. By the time the meat is boiling on the oven, the kids come home from school. He sits with Sarah and helps her with her homework, then goes out to play ball with Gamal and the other neighborhood kids.

He became well known in the neighborhood, he never asked for anything in return, he never asked personal questions, and never waited for any of them to tell him they needed something. He just gave, and that was it.

Afternoon would come and he would say goodbye to the kids and tell them they will continue their game the next day, just as long as they go home and study, promising that whoever gets the highest grades will earn a bike. He would then take off to Mr. Tala'at, who wanted to build another floor above house so that his son would have a place to get married. And so he had hired some workers to build two floors, so that Mr. Tala'at's daughter would not have to live far from him when she married as well. He went every afternoon to follow up on the work, also helping them. His clothes got dirty, but they were good times. Mr. Tala'at of course, would not allow him to leave at night with having dinner with the family.

He would enter his quiet home every night longing for his bed, every muscle in his body aching with exhaustion. After a warm shower he would collapse on his bed, begging for sleep.

But sleep never came. Every single night he lies in bed through all the dark hours, turning, squirming, and crying. Oh yes indeed he cries – very hard too. It is all the same every night. He usually gives up when his pillow case becomes soaked with tears. That is when he gets up, and stares at the picture on his bedside table. The picture of a smiling woman, his dead wife.

Oh how much he misses her, he craves her. What wouldn’t he give for just one more day with her? She was the most amazing woman in the world. Images of the day she died keeps flashing through his brain as a movie, and no matter how hard he tries, he can't stop them. He sees himself entering his house all dressed in his police uniform. He had had a very rough day, millions of people were chasing him, tracking him down, wanting his head. He managed to escape them and sneak into his house unnoticed, to see his wife spread out in the balcony in her blood. She was shot in the neck. Yes, it does seem gruesome. But what was more gruesome was the fact that she was shot by the hands of a fellow police officer. He still hadn’t found out who he was though.

But she wasn’t the only one to die like this. Hundreds of other people (some as young as children) died exactly the same way: watching the peaceful demonstrators below from their balcony as thugs and merciless policemen shot both purposefully towards the peaceful demonstrators or randomly in the air and around them, stray bullets catching poor powerless people everywhere.

Truthfully, he had never harmed any person himself throughout the demonstrations which erupted on the twenty fifth of January to save the entire nation of Egypt against thirty years of oppression, but he watched in silence as his fellow colleagues did. And it wasn’t during the demonstrations alone, the Egyptian Police were known for their brutality and inhumanity for years. And he wasn’t such a straight working officer either, or he wouldn’t have lived in such a fine house. Honest policemen were banished from the force.

But now everything had changed, and he had severely paid the price of everything wrong he had done by losing his wife whom he had loved so much. She was the only person who had ever cared for him. She was also the only person who ever managed to remind him he was still human, and she did so in her death.

And so he set his life to helping others, rather than destroying them - Especially those he felt guilty about. Both Mr. Adam and Mr. Tala'at had lost their eldest sons during the revolution, who were the only one supporting the old men, while Mrs. Zeinab's husband was brutally run over by a police car during the protests. He would help them with his life knowing that it was the only thing he wife would expect from him.

This night he heaved a great sigh, he hadn’t seen much sleep for weeks. He glanced at the clock next to his bed, it was six in the morning. Body still aching from the previous day, he got up, and dressed in a horrible yellow shirt.