Day One 8pm 

The Muezzin calls the faithful to prayer. It is a sound familiar to Cairo I 
suppose, but this is different, insidious, rattling the glass slightly in the 
windows of our room. 
 
-            What the hell? I say.
 
I turn to look at Rose, still on the bed, curled up but without any covers in the 
hot sticky evening. 
 
She doesn't stir, so I get up and open the shutters. People are flowing through 
the dusty street below, hurrying home in the evening gloom, dodging traffic and 
each other. Nobody acknowledges the Muezzin. 
 
Our cheap room is on the top floor of the grand sounding but run down Swiss
Hotel, about four hundred yards from Tahrir Square, where the Egyptian 
Museum draws tourists into the city centre like ants. The room is large, and for two 
Egyptian pounds extra we got our own bathroom, with hot water that is not quite too 
brown that you can't wash.  
Standing at the open window, the voice of the Muezzin is overwhelming. It is coming 
from an old, gunmetal grey loudspeaker, three feet across that is on the roof directly
above our room. Even the slight crackling, probably from a worn out cassette, does 
not stop its pervasive air, even above the noise of the Cairo traffic.
 
I lean back against the stone balustrade and listen, getting used to the volume. In 
a way, the rote uttering of the call to prayer is calming. I get lost in the sound, the 
ritual, and I can hear nothing else. The Muezzin's enters my head. All else is 
forgotten and done with. Finished, I am alone. Then, 
 
the noise stops abruptly. The deathly silent gradually fades back to the sounds of 
the city. I turn back to the street. The crowd and the traffic are the same, and still, 
nobody knows.  
I go back into the room and tell Rose to wake up, sleepyhead, it's time to go. 
 
Day Two 1am 
 
The Muezzin wakes me violently from my sleep. My sweat has dampened the covers 
and they lie crumpled between us. Rose is lying on her back now. I lie there and 
listen again to the call. It is the same, and I can hear the hissing of the tape in the 
background. I roll over, trying to shut out the sound, to sleep on. Rose does not stir 
of course. 
 
For minutes the call goes on, changing but the same, repeating the litany over and 
over. It is soporific but I lie there unable to catch sleep.
 
It seems to get louder and louder and, curious, I get up. The window is slightly ajar, 
in case any breeze comes to cool us. I open the shutters wider so I can see down to 
the street. The cars are not so frantic, and there are people about, but still they do 
not heed the call. 
 
For me the only thing is the chant, almost unbearable. The speaker is no different, 
old, shit spattered. The noise has changed though. It seems more direct, more 
focused. On me. 
 
The Arabic is from an ancient world, but I know it is for me. I sit half out of the room, 
with my back resting on the frame of the window. Eyes closed I see - 
 
-   	another room, gloomy, almost dark, pale blue rough plastered walls. 
	Rose is sat on a dark blue sleeping bag. The low ceiling curves above us, 
	the floor is bare dirt. There is no furniture. I reach out to her, but she...
 
Day Two 5.58 am 
 
The room is bright when I open my eyes. The city is waking up with me. My shoulders
ache from my position. I will have a red mark on my head where it has rested on the 
wooden baton that holds in the grimy glass of the window. 
 
Rose is on the bed, still on her back. Will she ever move again? I think. Probably not 
I have to tell myself, no matter how hard I try to get her to.  
When I close the windows, shutting out the hum, there is a morning stillness in the 
room that welcomes me back to the real world. I start to pick up our strewn clothes. 
As I lift a pair of Rose's jeans from next to a chair where I have thrown them, a 
cockroach scuttles away to hide under the bed. Then another follows it from under a 
sock. Then two more, and three and four until a steady, brown stream is moving from 
the chair the bed. 
 
A hundred or more make this journey. I put my bare foot in the middle of them, but 
they clamber over and around, I can feel a thousand tiny legs scratch my skin. 
Disgusted I move it, bending to look where they might have come from. I cannot see, 
but, christ, no, they are under the bed. Rose. I look anxiously to her, but she has not 
seen them. Then, abruptly, the stream stops, 
 
and the Muezzin starts his chant. 
 
His incessant plea vibrates the window panes. It tears me apart. I want to open the 
window and immerse myself again in the fervent, calming song, but there are the vile 
creatures under the bed. Rose would definitely disapprove if I just left them there. 
 
In the bathroom cupboard, I think. There is a brush I could use the handle to batter 
the cockroaches away and towards the door. As I move to get it, the Muezzin chants 
louder, increasing, imploring, getting more strident. I turn before I open the 
bathroom door. A pane in the window cracks, the glass falls to shatter on the floor, 
inaudible over the Muezzin. 

Forgetting the brush, I am drawn back to the window by the call. I reach for the small 
metal shutter catch, but a clicking sound over by the bed makes me spin. My foot 
catches the fallen glass and is cut. The cockroaches are enveloping the bed like a 
shadow. They remind me of the people on the street.
 
I rush over and sweep them away with one arm, but more come, and more. I wrench 
the sheet away from the bed. Cockroaches fly about the room. After clearing the bed 
again I cover Rose in the sheet and gather her into my arms. The cockroaches do 
not stop, and I am covered, but she is safe from them. She is safe. 
 
The Muezzin's chant stops. It is quiet. I turn to look at the window, the muslin curtain 
dancing gently in the breeze through the broken pane. The cockroaches are gone, 
and I pull the sheet back to make sure there are none underneath where Rose lies 
still. 
 
Day Two 3pm 
 
It is hot today. I have been tramping round the Khan-el-Khalil bazaar in the hope of 
seeming as though nothing has happened. Who was fooled? Not the traders and the 
tourists in the dingy alleyways of the bazaar. All they want is gold, bought or sold, 
baksheesh for them. They care little for a dirty, tired looking Englishman loping 
slowly through the trinkets and tobacco smoke. I am alone in caring. Literally, now 
Rose is no longer with me on anything. 
 
She was lying tranquilly on the bed when I got back from the markets. She's dead of 
course, so I was not surprised. I say a breezy hello, and sit down to take off my 
sticky clothes when the silence is shattered by the voice of the Muezzin. 
 
This stops me undressing. I sit on the threadbare seat staring at the window. The 
chant can only be directed at me. I do not understand the words, they are alien to 
me, but I know there is purpose to the Muezzin's song. I must uncover its secret. 
The revelation hits me physically. 

In the haze of the afternoon, the static air in the room overwhelms me and I find it 
hard to focus, other than on the chant. It fills the room like a foul smell, 

permeating the table, the bed, the chair, our clothes, even Rose lying in state. The 

room becomes a mausoleum, a crypt for my murdered companion. I fall from the 

chair and curl foetally around one of its legs. 
 
 -	I awake in the blue room. Rose is crouched in the corner, almost snarling. 
	She has a bruise over one eye, a small bloodstain on her white shirt. I say 
	something, something I cannot understand and she shakes her head, her wild 
	eyes flicking to the door and back to me. I speak again, and she stops. 
	I lean over to take a sleeping bag and jam it under the crack of the door where
	light is coming in, and the room is dark. I move forward to her. She cowers
	away as I reach out, 
 
I am on the bed next to her and she is shrinking away from me. I cry no, no, please,
and she stops. Her eyes are closed. 
 
She looks as if through me, smiles, and reaches to my face. The Muezzin has 
finished. There is only the sound of traffic, but I cannot face her without his song, so 
I turn away. I sense her lay her head on the pillow and I sob into my hands. 
 
Day Five 12.59 am 
 
It is more than two days since I left the room. I live for the regular solace of the 
Muezzin, now I know what I must do. 

The day before last, I left the room to buy bread, water, dried meat. In the time I 
was gone I could feel my face become taut as the skin shrank and my eyes 
deepened. It is only here in this room with the ancient invocation that I can feel 
alive, that I can be forgiven for what I have done. 
 
Just before the call starts, I wake from a deep dreamless slumber. Rose is on the 
bed and the air in the room is stale from my sweat and her decay. I open the 
window, to hear the call and sit on the chair I have placed to face it. 
 
The call starts again, it immerses me, drowns me in waves of relief as the secret 
comes. I must realise, then penance may be mine. The repetition of the words 
makes the meaning clear. Fixated, I drift into a blackened world of my own. 

It is wholly dark, nothing is light. The sleeping bag behind the door stops the bare 
bulb on the hall from disturbing my quarantine. There is the song and nothing else. 
My shadow is here now, it moves to one side with the rhythm of the song. I kick back 
with my knees, and the chair falls to the floor. 
 
On the bed, Rose is sat up and she is casting off a dull yellow light. She has one 
hand rested on her belly, which is swollen, distended, pregnant. Her eyes are wide 
open and staring at me, wild like the last time I saw them. She stares at me, her 
hand rubs her belly and her mouth moves like a lullaby to her unborn child. But 
there are no words. I cannot move, cannot help or comfort her. She sits, cooing 
over the child she will not bear, and tears form in her eyes. Her other hand moves, 
holding a knife. It moves up, then down and slashes until the bed is soaked. I dive 
for her hand but it is too late, the baby is gone in a torrent with the next stab. 
I smash her hand against the headboard and slap her and she screams, 

louder than the Muezzin who is now almost silent, a murmur in the background. I 
switch on the light to look where the knife fell, but it is gone.  I cannot see it. There 
is no blood on the floor or on the bed, where Rose is still sat up. 
 
She is old now, older than she will ever be. Her skin is greyed, her face lined, like 
bark. Her eyes are rheumy and sore. They look at me with unbearable pity and 
hatred. I reach for her gnarled hand, but she pulls it away, shaking her head. She 
raises one hand palm towards me, and lies down for the last time. 

The lines on her face fade and the bruises come back to cover her neck and her 
head, the crusts of blood reforming on her temple and behind her ear. I watch, 
waiting for the succour of the Muezzin to come again. 

 
Day Five 8 pm 
 
The call starts, as I lie naked on the floor, unwilling to move. It offers me no comfort 
now, not since the night time. It does not abate, repeating the same useless words 
and phrases, a litany that cannot help me. 
 
I take the chair and throw it to fracture against the wall. I smash the last  panes of 
glass with my fist, and blood spots the floor and the window. I  almost tear one side 
of the window from its hinges. Stepping onto the balcony I look up at the speaker, 
the sound terrifying, always the same, driving itself into my head, my soul. I bend 
double and heave dryly, pins of light swimming around my head. 

There is a banging, from my head or in the room. I look around and see Rose 
lying on 
 
-	Rose is lying there, on the hard, dirt floor, her head rested at an angle, her 
	blood congealing and her hands in between her legs and 
 
the bed, and I can see she is peaceful and I 
 
 
-             she is hurt and quiet and I hear a banging 

 
pass by her as I go to the door as the banging increases 
 

 
-            in my head and I open the door and step out into the sun of a desert morning 

 
and see two men in beige uniforms, guns at their hips and a well dressed man, 
European. 
- Mr Allan, we are from the Cairo police. This is Mr Nimmo of the British Consulate. 
We would like to ask you some questions about a Miss Rose Day. She has been 
reported as missing and we have reason to believe she accompanied you on your 
recent visit to the Sinai. Would you please come with us? 
 
I turn to look at Rose, to tell them where she is, and what happened, but she is 
not there. The room is empty, the Muezzin is silent.