By Riham Adly

"Sarah, sweetheart, matsebeneesh. Please, don’t go." He sings a strained plea that sounds like it struggled to break free from his throat.

Mahmoud calls me Bonbonayet omry, which means the bonbon of his life, because of the way I smile. I used to argue with him about it, but Mahmoud has his own logic about everything. Our relationship was like going up and down a ladder. Egyptian men are never romantic and Egyptian women love clichés. He’s the odd romantic and I just resent clichés.

When I watch him walk into my room every day I get this sickening sense of... satisfaction? He comes in, wearing the funny hat that clings to his head; his stubble a day or two old. The color of his scrubs matches the cerulean blue of his eyes — another rarity in Egyptians. Hmm, those new frameless glasses suit him. Yesterday, he smuggled in dandelions, a wilted bunch snatched from the side of the road. I wonder why. He’s always hated them, calls them weeds. He’s more of a roses person. I’m not.

Ha! He holds my hands, whispers classical rhyming Arabic poetry to my sleeping frame. I know he knows I can hear him and I know he knows I don’t like poetry. He’s provoking me, another helpless strategy to bring me back.

One of the perks of my present situation is having that exquisite liberty to come and go whenever I please, regardless of my motionlessness. It’s easier to play ghost when you’re in a coma. I like to scare the nurses and the night-shift newbie resident doctors, but nothing scares Mahmoud, except for flat lines and to be specific, my occasional flatlining on the monitor.

I love where I am right now. Gentle sun rays light up the loggia overlooking the garden. Sunflowers and soft-scented dandelions are everywhere. Tall trees sway to my singing, the smell of grass is earthy and strong. I like making wreaths, a luxury I’ve never had in my block apartment in Giza — that’s in Egypt, in case you were wondering.

Rich friends living in the suburbs bragged about their villas and gardens. Mahmoud was one of them. When he proposed—against the will of his parents—I said yes so I could have that garden. He loved it when I let my hair fall in an untamed mess around my face. He went half mad when I decided to wear the Higab and cover my hair for good.

We almost broke off the engagement when I joined the protests that preceded the 2011 revolution. I begged him to come join the volunteers in the make-shift hospitals after central security forces blasted us with tear gas. He refused.

We never kissed and never will, but right now he kisses my greyish eyelids, perpetually shut until I finally wake up—that’s what he thinks.

Today’s going to be the day. I can feel it. I watch him scrub for his upcoming surgery. I observe this intense look in his eyes as he says "scalpel". He squints when he’s deep in focus and when he does that his nose looks like a spear-like missile. The nurse wipes the sheen of sweat on his forehead before it trickles down his face. I observe his gloved hands, hands that could have helped save my best friend Mona from bleeding to death when police shot bird-shot pellet cartridges right into her left eye. His parents are so proud of him for backing up the regime that they forgive him for hanging on to me.

But, I don’t.

Something goes wrong with the surgery and the newbie nurse I tried to scare earlier uselessly tries to zap the life back into my heart with that external defibrillator, though my brain’s the one acting like a vegetable.

Today he screams like a wounded Hyena, like a madman. The sound of his sobs annoys me.

Men don’t cry. Doctors with degrees from John Hopkins or Yale or whatever don’t cry. Didn’t his proud parents teach him that?

He should’ve tried crying next to a tear-gas canister. He got what he deserved when rubber bullets dislodged a chunk of my skull, penetrating my brain.

They had to hold him still to shoot the sedative in his arm. "You had it coming,” I whisper in his ears. Karma deserves a high five.

When he wakes up, he stands tall over what’s left of me, but my legs are quick up that ladder—to heaven in case you were wondering.

Riham Adly is an award-winning fiction writer and editor from Giza, Egypt. The Ladder features in her flash fiction collection Love is Make-Believe, published in November 2021 by Clarendon House publications.

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