It’s summer in the global south (which is winter in the global north), and for the month of January Literatur.Review is bringing them all together, publishing previously untranslated or unpublished stories from the north and south of our world.

Ahmed Abdel Moneim Ramadan is an Egyptian novelist and storyteller who was born in 1985. He has been publishing his stories in newspapers and magazines since 2007.
He has published six collections of stories and two novels. The Cairo Fire we are publishing here is from his story collection "Cats Howl and Dogs Meow", which won the Edwar Al Kharrat Prize in 2024.

It wasn't a strange day: the sun didn't rise in the west, no monsters came out from behind a wall. Just an ordinary, hot, unremarkable day. Since the beginning of March, the heat had settled in unexpectedly, as if the months were mixed up or unbeknownst to us, had swapped places.

That night, I had dreamt of Hanan. Her name suits her, for her tenderness is obvious and her femininity bewitching. In my dream, she was sitting in a downtown café, a place I couldn't identify precisely. Despite her usual sweetness, I saw she was smoking a shisha with a masculine vigour at odds with her beauty. She blew out successive puffs of smoke without looking up from her feet. I waved, and she smiled at me.

She told me, without my asking, that she'd broken her leg a few weeks ago. She held her leg out horizontally to show me, then took out a pen and paper from her small bag. She drew her leg in plaster, decorated with hearts, signatures and drawings to remember. She did all this whilst continuing to inhale deeply from the shisha. I watched her, fascinated: her eyes fixed on her drawing, her delicate mouth sucking in the smoke, her chest rising and falling spasmodically.

She explained to me that this was her first outing since her injury. She hadn't told anyone, determined to face the streets she'd walked for years alone. She confided in me that she couldn't feel the ground beneath her feet like she used to. Something had changed. Was it her leg, or was the ground itself no longer the same?

When I woke up, I was worried about her. I'm a traditional man, I like beautiful women, as God created us. Call me shallow if you like, that's your prerogative. But I don't know if I really loved Hanan, or if her affections crept into my heart at some point, without my realising it. My worry drove me to call her. Maybe her leg really was broken. I called, but she didn't answer.

I've always believed in my dreams. Our president believes in them too. Everyone here believes in their dreams. But only a few see their dreams come true. Someone once told me to stop believing in dreams. "You're not a prophet or a saint, for them to come true," he said. I replied that the dreams of Al-Aziz of Egypt, interpreted by Joseph, had come true despite his disbelief. He retorted that Al-Aziz of Egypt was a ruler, and the dreams of rulers always end up coming true.

I decided to go downtown - maybe I'd run into her. Several hours earlier, there had been an explosion in front of the Supreme Court building, but I went anyway. Explosions don't scare us like they should; they've become such a regular occurrence. We barely give them a glance out of the corner of our eye, passing through the smoke without removing our headphones and interrupting Cheb Khaled's singing.

As I was walking down Ramsès Street, a huge monkey appeared beside me. A real monkey, with thick fur, a stocky body, a peculiar posture and a bright red backside. A monkey like the ones you see in the movies. I hadn't seen a real monkey in over twenty years, since my last visit to the zoo, before they closed it and released the animals onto the streets. The monkey jumped up, putting his furry hand on my shoulder to signal his presence. Not that he needed to - he was perfectly conspicuous already. Yet he seemed to want to be noticed only by me, as people passing by didn't react.

That very morning, I'd read a news story about monkeys escaping from a veterinary school. I had laughed, without paying any further attention: these days, all news amuses me but none really concerns me. I turned to the monkey, and he smiled. It wasn't a smile like ours, but it was recognisable. I glanced around, looking for a reaction from people. Nothing. No one seemed intrigued, or even slightly distracted. Everyone walked with the same sullen expression, furrowed brow, gaze blank but fixed, and one hand ready to push away any obstacle in the midst of this dense crowd.

The monkey was bigger than I expected, or perhaps bigger than I imagined. He reminded me of the apes in the film Planet of the Apes. He exceeded my height and looked almost adult. I whispered that he looked like a young gorilla, which made him laugh. Surprised, I asked him if he understood me. He nodded and said yes. I turned around, hoping that others could see what I was seeing, but no one seemed to be paying attention. Not even a young man walking past, who must have heard the monkey talking, reacted.

I quickened my pace, to get away from the monkey, but he followed me with disconcerting agility, weaving between legs and leaping over shoulders. He was always right my side, like a silent shadow. I hesitated, almost asking a passer-by if he could see the monkey too, but I feared he'd either think me crazy, or that I was poking fun at him and get angry. So I kept quiet.

The monkey grabbed my leg and pointed down a street to the right. He led me on a convoluted route around the city's old quarter, as if he knew the place inside out. I have no idea why I followed him so willingly. My gaze alternated between his furry body and the indifferent passers-by. He pointed to a café in a side alley, jumped in and sat down on one of the traditional wooden chairs. He gestured for me to join him. He clapped and the waiter came over without showing the slightest surprise, just like everyone else who had seen us. With the confidence of a regular, the monkey ordered two teas, no sugar.

All the customers in the café, set up in the middle of the street, were smoking shishas, and the place was swathed in a cloud of apple, pineapple and mint scented smoke. Just to our right sat a dead man, accompanied by two murdered youths. I knew them well: I'd attended all three of their funerals. They stood there, silent, blowing smoke from their shishas. Further on sat a beautiful woman, alone. She was waiting for a man who would never come, but she kept waiting. She wasn't as beautiful as Hanan, but she was beautiful all the same. Passers-by murmured that a fire had broken out in a nearby administration building. No one was moving. We heard them, then resumed our conversations, or rather our silence. I told the monkey that I knew Hanan was nearby, but he didn't reply.

The smell of smoke from the fire now pervaded the air, mingling with the shisha smoke. The cloud thickened around us, but still no one moved. Even when we heard that the fire was spreading in our direction, no one stood up. A voice shouted from inside the café: "Let it burn." The monkey, however, was choking, seized by a violent coughing fit. Before getting up, he pulled me by the arm to follow him, trying to get away from the smoke, but there was no way out.

I don't know how many of us there were, enveloped by this veil of smoke. We walked blindly, sometimes violently colliding. One voice alone apologised after a collision: it was Hanan. I recognized her. I asked her why she had come out. She replied: "My leg was broken. I came out to test it." I smiled. I crouched down and lifted her onto my shoulders, as we do at protests. She was light, just as I'd imagined. With one hand, I held her still recovering leg and with the other, the monkey's hand. He had found one of his escaped friends, and the four of us walked on, looking for a way out. I don't know if others had joined us - perhaps Hanan's friends, the monkey's, or strangers. But all I could feel was Hanan's light body on my shoulder, the monkey's rough hand in mine, the smell of the choking smoke, and the murky haze that surrounded us, blinding us.