“Duty Calls” is from Mohamed Kheir’s 2014 short-story collection, Blink. As translator Caroline Benson writes, “Mohamed Kheir is at the forefront of a group of Egyptian writers known for astonishing readers with their ability to capture the poetics of quotidian contemporary life. The strength of Kheir’s writing lies in its creative and imaginative probings of the tensions, layers, and contradictions of gender, emigration, family, politics, and class.”
Duty Calls
By Mohamed Kheir
Translated by Caroline Benson
The night train dropped me at the main station, which was dozens of kilometers from our village. I found a few microbuses accepting passengers in the early dawn light. One of them was full before sunrise, and we took off. I got off at the big minaret and climbed into the back of a pickup taking a per-person fare. The morning breeze struck our faces, the sun now coming up quiet and confident. I hoped my dad was alright and it was just that my parents were missing me, as usual. I really needed a couple days’ rest.
I climbed the road up to our mountain village on foot, getting stares from people who didn’t remember me or haven’t ever known me. I was carrying my shoulder bag, in which I had stopped bringing my modest “trophies”—poetry collections I’d published in the capital. My dad preferred traditional poetry, and he hadn’t seen me on TV, so I had shifted to reassuring them about my health and material well-being, and that was good enough.
My mom, pink-cheeked, opened the door and hugged me tight.
My dad came up behind her, incredulous: “You called him anyway?” Then he turned to me and said, “Glad you’re back,” before he went into his room.
He seemed, from that quick glance, to be doing well, at least for his age, so I relaxed a bit and slept for a while. I ate ravenously at lunch, and then it was his turn to sleep. My mom cleared the plates and came to see me in my room.
“Of course I called you. What was I going to do, call the girls?” Her powerful, confident voice had always terrified us in our childhood. She was silent for a minute, gathering her black thobe under her legs. “These people keep coming at us, walking right over us. Your dad’s health can’t take it anymore.”
I was silent, the way I usually was when I felt wary about what was coming next. I let her continue.
“Did you see the trash outside the house? Every day it’s something new. Stuff happening on the ground, the broken gate. Unacceptable stuff. We used to make one phone call, and they were up and gone. Now we’re at a dead end, and your dad can’t accept it. Well, he’s not going to sit back and let it happen.”
All my life, I’d feared getting tangled up in my dad’s problems. Recently, I’d thought that things had changed, and I’d been spared. It seemed I hadn’t.
“Yesterday, they told him they’ll come and throw him out! See how it is?” She wiped at a tear.
“Come stay with me,” I said. That was me, always taking the escape route. But she went on as if she hadn’t heard me, or as if she wasn’t convinced.
“And your dad will what? Just roll over? Yesterday he told them, well, if any of them’s a man he can step inside.”
My left leg started to shake, so I repeated, “Leave this dump and come stay with me.”
She looked at me for a minute. It seemed as though she was going to say something, but suddenly there was a loud ruckus coming from outside that got louder and louder. Her eyes darted around the room, and she left.
I stood in place, not knowing what to do. She hurried back with something in her hand, and it wasn’t long before my hunch was confirmed. It was a revolver, and she offered it to me.
“Take it, love. Don’t be afraid. It’s registered.”
I gaped at her like a fool. Her hand was still outstretched, and I took the gun. It was heavier than I expected. “This is the hammer,” she said, pointing at it. “Don’t forget to pull it.” She led me to the high window. I dragged the table beneath it, climbed on top, and saw, from above, the crowd gathering outside our front door.
Finally, she cried out: “If they get past the doorstep, you’re not my son anymore.”
I stuck the revolver through the gap in the window, holding my right hand with my left, but it didn’t stop it from shaking.
Mohamed Kheir is an award-winning novelist, poet, short story writer, journalist, and lyricist. His short story collections Blink (2014) and Radio Phantoms (2011) both received The Sawiris Cultural Award, and his poetry collection Exterior, Night (2001) was awarded the Egyptian Ministry of Culture Award for poetry. His second novel, Slipping (Kotob Khan Publishing House, 2018 and Two Lines Press, 2021), was translated to English by Robin Moger and won the prestigious Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. His second novel, Sleep Phase, was recently published (2025) with the same translator and publisher. Kheir lives in Egypt.
Caroline Benson is a translator, researcher, and editor of contemporary Arabic fiction and poetry. They hold an MA in Arabic language and literature from the American University in Cairo, where their MA thesis was the 2025 recipient of the Mona Abaza Endowed Award. Their translations have been published by Goethe Institut, Mada Masr, and ArabLit. They have worked in Cairo with Al Kotob Khan and the American University in Cairo Press.
Photo: Kevin O’Mara.