My car key saved my life

Amid the silence of the dawn and the noise of the car’s cassette player, my friend and I sat in the front seats that morning, waiting for the sun to come up so that we could go home, as we had grown accustomed to do. We would come back that afternoon to continue the sit-in that had started about 40 days before.

Amid the silence and noise of the moment, we only heard one sentence: “The attack has begun.” It was followed by the suffocating smoke of tear gas.

We saw people running around us, banging on the surrounding lampposts to warn everyone that that morning, which started out normal, would no longer be normal for the rest of our lives.

Gas canisters were flying everywhere and I could see them in my rear-view mirror; I drove quickly and parked in the “safety zone”, leaving the car in the protection of God. My friend and I then quickly ran towards the Rabaa Mosque, which is where the young men were telling us to head for.

We ran and the bullets ran behind us, claiming the lives of whoever they caught up with and hitting those they were destined to meet. We raced against death towards an imaginary finish line, each one trying to get there first. Those running to our right and left fell and we remained alone racing death towards nothing. In such circumstances you cannot find the false safety you look for in every direction. There were deadly snipers standing everywhere, waiting for the right moment to hit their prey.

The snipers do not care who is in front of them — young, old, a child, a woman; everyone was under fire; everyone was a target based on the master’s mood. This master claimed lives non-stop and those souls ascended to their creator to complain about the oppression of God’s creatures to the One who made them.

We ran quickly and behind us a young man was being carried, already dead. I think he was the first martyr in the square because when the attack began it started in the small street behind Tiba Mall, where we were. His wound was strange, as we could see his ribs and the hole was too big to be from a regular sized bullet. I stood in front of his body shocked. The tear gas was nothing more than the beginning of the daily routine and today was to be a decisive day. Nothing would ever again be the way it was after this.

I rushed over to the field hospital to document the injuries and I was shocked by what I saw. I realised that the first martyr and his wound, which I had found strange, was a lot less shocking than what I witnessed later on. Brains were blown out and the people were always hit in the chest or the head. Anyone who was shot was killed; death flew around the square all day.

The humming of the aircraft came closer to the hospital and everyone there was warning people not to stand near the windows. You were targeted regardless of your location; even the field hospital full to the brim with wounded individuals and martyrs was a target. They attacked us heavily with tear gas. We, along with the wounded, were suffocating.

When I picked up my camera to take a picture of a deep wound in one of the martyr’s necks, I heard a bullet fly over my head. I was scolded by the man in charge. He told me to go back to where I was before, as I was a target because of what I was holding in my hands. I stuck to a wall and could barely find a place for my feet, as the floor was crowded with blood, bodies and death.

They asked us to leave after we finished documenting the martyrs in the room and to finish our work somewhere else. I couldn’t bear it any more and left, concealing my shock and astonishment at what I had seen. I looked for a place where I could breathe fresh air, that did not have the smell of tear gas or ruby red blood, but I found nowhere to go. Every inch of the place had a smell of gas.

I went to go check on my friend in the women’s prayer area in the mosque where I had left her. When I arrived, I saw that they had formed a circle around something and were crying. I realised that they were standing around a number of bodies because they couldn’t find anywhere else to put them; the rooms, halls and stairs were already full of bodies and the day had just started.

When my phone finally got a signal, which was a rarity, I only wanted to hear my mother’s voice. So when my phone rang with the special ringtone I had assigned to her, I rushed to answer. I tried to stand in a place that was relatively quiet, so that she wouldn’t worry, but I couldn’t find anywhere. All around me children cried and women never stopped praying; their sighs penetrated my ears and heart and there was nothing I could do for them but pray myself. When the sound of the bullets does not stop, you are trapped by noise.

I mustered some strength and answered the phone: “Mom, I am okay.”

“I leave you in the hands of God, the Ultimate Protector,” she told me before the connection was cut.

It was as if my phone was telling me, “that is enough, you have been entrusted to God by your mother.”

I felt reassured and I went out looking for something to do. All I found was an old man sitting on the pavement, breaking stones to give them to the men on the front line. This is all we had to defend ourselves against the rain of bullets coming at us from every direction.

Collecting the stones broken by the old man in anything I could find, I passed them to the young men taking them to the front. When we finished breaking the paving slabs, we looked for others. It was then that I remembered Tahrir Square. We did the same thing there to protect the square and the revolution; stones against bullets.

Then we heard the news that Asmaa El-Beltagy had been shot.

How? I had just seen her a while ago. We had gathered stones together. When did this happen? How could her killer dare to shoot her? Didn’t they see the innocence in her face? Didn’t they see the child-like features of her beautiful face? How did they have the courage to do this to such a small angel like Asmaa?

Her body passed by us and we ran like crazy behind it. We reached the Rabaa Medical Centre where she took her last breaths. The army and police conspired against her. They prevented the ambulance from reaching her. She could have been saved if it hadn’t been for the lack of medical equipment and the critical state she was in which required her to be moved out of the square for treatment.

But this was her fate. We went to bid her farewell before her brothers moved her from the square; it was the end of the day. However, an armoured vehicle stood in front of the medical centre’s door and opened fire on us. They cornered us between the medical centre’s two entrances; one was blocked by an armoured vehicle claiming as many lives as it could, and the other was manned by a crazy sniper who shot at the slightest sign of movement. We threw ourselves to the ground while bullets and empty shells flew all around at an alarming rate. Two young men fell next to me, dead, and I was hit in my left side. The bullet is still in my body to this day. Another bullet would have hit me in the back, but it was stopped in its deadly tracks by my car key, my battery chargers and the camera lens in my backpack; they saved me from what would have been a fatal shot.

After they had killed and wounded to their satisfaction, they came into the centre, masked in black, and held their guns up to our faces. Like prisoners of war, we were marched out of the Rabaa Medical Centre in two long lines; one line of men and one line of women and children. They had sought refuge in the centre from the treacherous bullets, which had started over 12 hours before and been fired non-stop.

We left the centre at gunpoint and the leader of the soldiers stood by the armoured vehicle, chewing gum mockingly. He didn’t stir or bat an eyelid while we came out. Those of us who could carry the wounded did so, and those who could carry a martyr did so. Black smoke had filled the place and Rabaa had burned around us; nothing but ashes was left.

We walked out towards the side streets under a barrage of bullets that did not stop. One of our friends followed us and was sobbing uncontrollably. We couldn’t make out anything she was saying, except, “They burned the field hospital, they burned the mosque, and they burned the bodies of the martyrs.” She was one of the last ones out and saw with her own eyes the fire that ate everything in its way.

We later saw the burnt bodies in Al-Iman Mosque. Some of the people were alive when they and all around them were set on fire.

The day of the Rabaa Al-Adawiyya massacre will remain etched in our memories no matter how many details are lost or forgotten in the retellings. Try to talk about that day, write what you experienced and spread the images you want of that day. That day, its hours, events, emotions and shock, will remain imprisoned in your heart and mind no matter what you do or however much you talk about it.

Translated from Mubasher.aljazeera.net , 10 August, 2015.

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