A couple of weeks ago, I tried to get help at the embassy and when that didn’t work, I went to the hospital where I had previously been assured I would get help if I needed it. I didn’t get all the help I needed, but I did get some medicine. When I left last time, I walked back to the train station. To get there, I had to circle around the outside of the hospital.
At the back of the hospital, near the walkway that leads to the train, I saw an abandoned coffin. At first, I thought it was a joke or a prop because the style of the coffin was straight out of a vampire movie or a Western. It was not a rectangle with a curved lid; it was a lengthened hexagon with a flat lid. I looked more closely and was startled to see that it was real. After so many disappointments, seeing that coffin was sobering.
I went to the hospital again today. My anxiety/PTSD symptoms are producing so much stomach acid that I wake up in the middle of the night, choking on bile. As I approached the hospital from the train, there were dozens of men surrounding two cars. They were where the walkway empties into the parking lot for the hospital. The men were silent, but the air was tense.
Cairo is a loud place and to English speakers, locals often sound like they are angrily yelling at each other when they are merely conversing. Normally a crowd this large would be very loud, but I don’t remember any of them speaking. I followed the lines of their eyes and the slopes of their shoulders to see that each of the cars was a hearse and each hearse had a coffin, an occupied coffin, in it.
Silent tension was the only thing to be said.
The hospital didn’t give me any medicine today. “Come back tomorrow.” That is Egypt’s unofficial motto: Come back tomorrow, insha’Allah.
