The Worlds of Kamal Ruhayyim عوالم كمال رُحيّم

واشتد ألمي على طفل بالذات من بين الضحايا، كان مُمدَّدًا على أحد الأرصفة ويداه تحيطان برأسه وقد فارق الحياة، مات من لحظة خوف، سقط وهو يجري خائفًا من صراخ الطائرات واصطدم رأسُه بحافَّة الرصيف، قتله الفاجر ذو النظارة الرِّيبَان الذي يحلق في الأعلى وشاركه الفعلَ رصيفٌ أعمى بغير قلب..

My grief was sharpest for one child among the victims: he lay stretched on a pavement with his hands around his head, gone from this life. He died of a moment of fear; he fell as he ran in terror from the screaming of the planes and his head struck the kerb. He was killed by the villain in Ray-Ban glasses circling high above, and a blind, heartless pavement shared in the deed.

From the novel Port Said 68 · Chapter 27

Words of a narrator or a character belong to the novel's world, not to the author's personal views.

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Port Said 68

وقلنا أيضًا إنه ربما كان يقصد بهذه البصمة ألَّا يفضَّ الخطاب سواها، أو لعلَّه شعر بدُنُوِّ الأجَل وحرص على أن يرسل لها شيئًا من ذاته ومن الأرض التي مات فيها.. لعلَّهُ.. ربَّما.. كأنَّما..

We said too that perhaps by this thumbprint he meant that no one but she should open the letter, or perhaps he felt the end drawing near and wanted to send her something of himself and of the earth he died in. Perhaps. Maybe. As if.

Port Said 68

فكل ما كان يملكه خمس جواميس وجدوا أربعة منها في زريبته والخامسة مضروبة بالنار وميِّتة في المصرف، فالمسكينة هذه هي التي تسلَّلت من الزريبة وغطست في المصرف لتستحِمَّ ونحن الذين أرديناها! وقُيِّدت القضيةُ ضد مجهول..

All he owned was five buffaloes; they found four in his pen and the fifth shot dead in the drainage canal. The poor thing had slipped out of the pen and dived into the canal to bathe, and it was we who gunned her down! The case was filed against persons unknown.

Port Said 68