Live Encounters Arab Women Poets & Writers June 2025
Dark Intervals, story by Safaa Elnagar.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Dark Intervals
As is his new habit, he dries my hair, but today his hands reach for my neck, feeling the veins, and I burst into laughter. When his lingering hands reach my ears and encircle my face, I slip away from them and run from him, caught between the naivety of my giggles and my panting breaths.
His behavior has changed! Sometimes he asks me to sit across from him, and I settle into the chair he points to. Silence stretches as he stares at my face, as if searching for something he’s lost.
Perhaps it’s her picture—the one he hides in his wallet. He loves her, yet he cuts her off, even after death, refusing to recite Al-Fatiha for her. He can’t forget how she left him as a child, sucking his fingers, only to move to another man’s bed as soon as my grandfather died, before she even took off her mourning clothes. And he can’t forgive her for dying before he became a man who could defend his right to her.
Other times, he warns me against playing with the neighbors’ boys, threatening to break my neck if he sees me talking to one. I didn’t need his warning—before his shadow even fell over the street, the chain of play would lose a link. Once, he caught me off guard, suddenly looming over me, yanking my hair and hitting me. My mother tried to calm him, to pull him away from me. After he let me go, she held me in her arms and scolded me:
“Didn’t I tell you not to stay out late? You’re grown now.”
Then she’d go back to insisting that I was almost a carbon copy of her… my grandmother, who never grew old. That’s why she could never let go of her men—except for my father, who was merely her son, stealing her motherhood before she returned to her true self: the stranger’s woman.
His staring intensifies, and the innocence of my features fades. I become a woman painted in rainbow colors, undressing in men’s hands. Our faces blur in his eyes, and when we meet, I don’t know who he sees. I lengthen my braid, hoping he’ll notice it, but the fiery hair always flares in his gaze, and the number of men who undress me in his mind multiplies.
Ever since her image possessed him when he looks at me, I can’t sleep with any part of my body exposed. Even if I’m wearing pajamas and pants in the summer heat, I must be covered—even if just by a bedsheet. I look like a mummy wrapped in linen, submerged in death. I’m asleep, but all my senses are awake, circling me like a pharaoh’s curse lying in wait for whoever opens the tomb door. At the slightest shift in the air of the room, my eyes snap open, and I pull the cover from my face like a sentry in old tales announcing his vigilance with a shout:
“Who’s there?”
The nights multiply when I uncover my face and ask if he wants something. I reassure myself with an answer: “The matches are on the desk.” I’ve made a habit of keeping a matchbox there so that if the power goes out, I’ll have a light source. It happens again and again, and each time, the matches remain untouched in their place.
The dragon’s breath from the distant East strikes my head, and fever sweeps through me like an endless storm. It starts with a headache and chills running through my body. Heat rises from my skull, soothed only by cold compresses, though they do nothing for the ringing in my ears or the reel of memories and delusions spinning relentlessly in my mind’s eye.
Coming home from school, I rush up the stairs to our top-floor apartment. The neighbor’s son, descending just as fast, bumps into me—deliberately—his arm brushing against my chest, which always leads my leaps. He apologizes with wide eyes, but I ignore him, cursing his audacity in my head. Before I reach the last step, fragments of their argument reach me, some sharp, others fading away. I approach our door, and before I press the buzzer, I hear her scolding him with reproach:
“Not even the neighbors’ daughters are safe from your antics… Shame on you! She’s practically a bride now.”
“Shame? You’re the one who’s lost her mind.”
As soon as I enter, silence falls after my mother’s kiss and my father’s warm welcome—which my mother calls excessive coddling. Beyond that, a heavy quiet, breaths held between a woman resigned as a peasant, fresh from her village in her black galabiya smelling of earth, and a man who never stops staring and searching. My head burns hotter, like a rocket defying gravity, and my mother still presses compresses with one hand while massaging my legs with the other. I don’t feel their weight—just their pulse, hinting at a pain I can’t grasp.
The night drags on, my mother still beside me, sleepless. Through the flames gathering in my eyes, I see him pat her shoulder, urging her to rest while he takes over the compresses and massages. When she refuses with a shake of her head, he insists, soothing her hand, telling her to go and rest—though worry is the only comfort I know.
Minutes pass monotonously between compresses, the embers of fire flickering. Between waves of pain, I feel the fever—not in my legs, but in the hands massaging them…
A shiver runs through me again, and fumes rise from my head, forming images from the movies I’ve watched—dogs sinking claws into my flesh, a wolf clamping its jaws around my neck, stealing my soul. Then comes the fiery-haired woman—her eyes gleaming with allure and temptation. I fear her, yet I want to be her. And the neighbor’s son peeks at my legs as I climb and descend the stairs.
The hands move up from my legs, past my knees, slithering further, creeping like a snake, its hiss feverish as hell… lying in wait like death. My throat dries like cracked earth. I try to open my eyes, unable to distinguish between the fire in my head and its nightmares. His face appears on the red mesh, a vein pulsing from heat—not the fever consuming me. I gather all my strength and look into his eyes, his hand stiff on my bare thigh. I push it away, and the flying strands of hair turn into long braids. His hand jerks back, and I break free. My voice gathers to ask:
“Do you want the matches?”
Without guiding him to them—as I usually do—he turns his back, forgetting to cover me.
And as I come home from school, rushing up the stairs to our top-floor apartment, the neighbor’s son bumps into me again—just as fast, just as deliberate—his arm brushing my chest, always ahead of my leaps. Before he can apologize with wide eyes, I unbutton my blouse and let him catch me in his arms.
© Safaa Elnagar
Dr Salwa Gouda is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.
Safaa Elnagar (b. 1973) is an Egyptian writer and scholar with a PhD in Media (Radio and Television) from Cairo University. Her notable literary works include the short story collection The Girl Who Stole Her Brother’s Height (Merit Publishing, 2004), the novel The Resignation of the Angel of Death (Sharqiyat Publishing, 2005), and the short story collection The Maidens Shell Peas (Rawafed Publishing). Her academic and creative writings explore social and political themes in Egyptian society.