: Ma'lesh :
an excerpt by Ihab Hassan
Kasim wakes up with a leaden premonition about the day. He feels it in his body—his bones, loins, or guts, how could it matter in Egypt, where the word ma’leshabsolves errors and washes away remissions to the sea? In the bathroom next door, he hears the water running and his father whetting his razor on a leather strop. Swish, flop. At least, Kasim no longer needs to hear those nocturnal cries issuing from his parents’ bedroom; they ceased when his mother died; now his father snores and tosses alone.
Forget the premonitions, Kasim tells himself, you’re no longer a child. Worry about the day, not the night. Will they call a strike? Will el boliceuse rubber bullets or just their evil canes? If things go well, he can study in the library with his friend Aziz. So what if he’s a Copt? They go back, the Copts, his father had told him, tilling the land before Amr ever conquered Egypt.
