Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Rajeh

At first, they appeared timid.

They wore black, walked slowly, and gazed at everything around them, as if measuring the air with their eyes. We only took note of them after they started moving in groups of five or more. With the same calm, the same intent look, they roamed the streets without rest.

No one knew where they came from, or why they moved in such a synchronized way. Apart from their black clothes and strange methods of walking, which seemed both endless and directionless, they looked just like us. 

Whenever I encountered one of them in the street, I would say hello, out of curiosity, smiling. They never responded, or so much as looked in my direction. I didn’t realize others noticed them too until my neighbor, with the carefully dyed hair and time-immune features, came over one day to warn me of the “dark ones”, as she called them. With childlike enthusiasm, she relayed some of the rumors surrounding them. Some said that they were members of a secret society with masonic ties, while others maintained that they were worshippers of Satan, but the view she supported was that they belonged to an obscure political movement whose followers lived on the outskirts of cities, not interacting with any of the residents and biding their time until they gained enough numbers to take over the city itself. She offered no evidence in favor of any theory, yet appeared entirely convinced of the latter’s truth, and somewhat unsettled by my lack of reciprocation. 

The papers were busy peddling one story after another, then going back to refute them one by one as newer, more innovative stories came to the fore. It was like a communal game in which everyone agreed to take part. Several papers claimed that they were merely actors in a play designed by the government to distract the populace from its dwindling standards of living, pointing out how the police always seemed to turn a blind eye to their activities, despite being exceedingly harsh on any other deviation from the social order. Other papers simply stated that they were an unconventional but peaceful group who should nonetheless be closely monitored. I would chuckle every morning as I followed the press’ hysterical obsession with them, imagining my neighbor supplying all the local editors with their daily standpoints.  

Then began the writing on the walls: angry, all-damning invectives in thick, black letters, as if written with a piece of coal, yet in a meticulous, Kufic script, whose elegance seemed at odds with the amount of rage permeating the lines. Every wall in the city became a canvas overflowing with vile words. And as the vileness of the words grew, the movements of the dark ones appeared calmer, a kind of tranquility in their faces, even though their eyes remained as alert as ever.  

But it was as though they never saw us. We would look at them long enough, hoping for as much as a turn of the head, but to no avail. The streets they frequented saw a rise in traffic accidents, as drivers were too distracted by them. 

As much as I wanted to attract their attention at first, I began trying, whenever I was commuting to work or taking my daughter to the nearby park, to avoid looking directly at them. I instructed my daughter to follow my example. When she asked why, I could not think of a convincing response. I told her they were afflicted with a rare type of madness which only manifests when their eyes meet the eyes of others. 

After about a month, the walls could no longer fit the rage. Every morning, on our doorsteps, we would find messages written on a cardboard scroll, tied with a black ribbon, in the same Kufic script. These were the same messages we saw on the walls, along with a few additions, such as: Black is the origin of everything, or Black is completeness. You must join the procession. Return to the Kufic, return to beauty. 

Whoever they were, the idea that they had reached the thresholds of our houses alarmed everyone. At work, in the markets, at the park, I heard the same discussions: Who were they? What did they really want? Were they actually the ones behind the messages? We were gripped by a fear that they might proceed to invade our homes, although they showed no signs of doing so. 

My neighbor still came by every day to tell me about the growing numbers of those in black. She would fidget in her seat, crossing her arms, her eyes widening, gleaming as she began to speak of them. Brushing a lock of hair from her forehead, revealing its scattered veins, she would assert that their next move was to roam in our own bedrooms and sleep in our beds. I almost laughed when I imagined that to be the end goal of all their labors, but I continued to feign interest in what she was saying. She saw them as a form of absolute evil, since they never directed their curses onto something or someone in particular, nor did they ever express any clear objectives. They merely grumbled, wrote nonsense about the color black and Kufic script, and filled the streets with their bleak garbs.  

With the coming of spring, people seemed to pay less heed to the dark ones, despite their proliferation, their continued processions, their mad messages and Kufic writings on the walls. It was as though we all sought a distraction from them — or that they, through their ubiquity, had become just another detail of our everyday lives, like the newspaper vendors and the beggars on every corner, or the identical trees lining the streets of the city. Only my neighbor maintained her interest in them, and in bombarding me with her many theories about them. 

Our city in the spring is different than it is any other time of year, and spring in our city is different than it is in any other. Countless trees sheathe the streets and flood the fields, radiant with their green leaves and red and pink and purple flowers. The parks and gardens add their own strokes to this natural canvas, this carnival of color that alone seemed capable of counteracting all the black that invaded the scene, of liberating the city from its state of gloom. 

However, just like in horror films, the real danger appears when characters begin to suspect they are in the clear. The cloak of security that spring brought betrayed its frailty when emails began invading our inboxes. The messages restored our fears, even heightened them, and prompted my neighbor into longer sojourns at my house, rambling out her worries and predictions.

For a whole month we received one unchanging message, urging us not to leave the house on the first Wednesday of the coming month, to raise black flags from our balconies, and, in case we do leave the house, to wear black. 

“Stay home or join us with black flags and black clothes. Tell your friends and family not to go to work either, and to join us. Everything needs to change and you need to help us. We must return to the origins, to black, to the Kufic. The only alternative is total chaos.” It was a photograph of a letter also written in charcoal Kufic script. 

As the barrage of emails continued, there was no question of a clash between the authorities and those in black. Many of them were arrested or driven out by the unprecedented number of officers and soldiers patrolling the streets. Yet they seemed to sprout from the dust, ever increasing, their silent journey never ending. We were warned against joining them. Decrees were issued to forbid the wearing of black. The Kufic script was banned. Calligraphers were rounded up for investigation. 

Some of us began sympathizing with the dark ones. Even my old neighbor suspended her hostility, and she all but moved in with me as she explained the reasons for her shifting perspectives. She said that she had read a lot in the past few days, and learned that the black flag was a symbol of the Abbasid caliphate, that Kufic was among the most distinguished scripts in Arabic, and that it was initially used for writing the Quran. She concluded that the dark ones were inviting us to reclaim the roots of our culture. She returned the next day to say that the black flag was also the symbol of anarchists and that she was confused. 

The papers began naming the promised day the “Day of Strike.” They urged us all to go to work in our most brightly colored clothes, to walk freely through the streets, to stand up to those intruders. News reports were now claiming they were agents of unspecified foreign parties. The streets brimmed with pots of blooming plants as though the city was hosting some sort of festival. 

The day the dark ones had chosen for their strike was dark and dusty, as if nature was rallying behind them, forcing us to shelter indoors. Nevertheless, I had to leave for work, fearing the threats of severe punishment against those who yielded to the demands of what the press called “the vandals.” My fear, however, was not great enough to prevent me from wearing black that day, in passive support of the dark ones. 

I woke up at my usual time, collected my things in my handbag, and picked up my daughter’s backpack, bursting at the seams with books and notepads. Following me down the stairs, she hummed some English song she had just learned at school. We were late to school every day, but today I especially did not care. I should not have left the house in the first place. I remembered the words of the principal as he emphasized the necessity of attendance that day. Tersely he had said that these were orders from above and that he had no hand in them. Before any of us could object, he turned and left. 

In truth, my desire to miss work was not a result of my support for the dark ones. I was not against them, but I was also not with them. Rather, I knew nothing about them or their motives. I was also skeptical of strikes, and never fathomed what could ever come of them. I feared a potential chaos that would disrupt everything. They asked us not to leave our houses, but also announced that they will be out in their dark clothing, and only God knows what that might lead to. I thought long and hard about sparing my daughter the day’s exhaustion, but the principal’s threats left me no choice. My daughter, despite being only seven years old, felt a fair amount of thrill. “Mommy,” she interrupted her song to say, the curiosity glowing in her eyes, “what’s a strike?” 

I was surprised she knew that word, having never mentioned it in her presence. “It means people stay home and don’t go to work.”

“And what’s a Kufic?”

“It’s an old handwriting in Arabic.”

Her quizzical gaze gave way to a fit of laughter as she followed me to our small car in front of the house. 

To my surprise, the streets were virtually empty, as if all the city’s inhabitants had suddenly deserted. The sandstorm had turned the morning sky to a faint yellow, and the smell of dust was stronger than usual. The few people around in the streets and alleys were, like me, in black. 

When I dropped my daughter off, the supervisor almost returned her to me, saying that she was the only student who showed up and they could not open a whole school for one student. I insisted that it was not a holiday, but a regular school day, and so she had no right to close the school. As she was being led away by the supervisor, my daughter shot a disapproving glance over her shoulder, embarrassed by my behavior. 

I arrived at work to find that most of my colleagues had not come, and those who did were also wearing black, including the manager. He appeared flustered when I looked at him, and avoided speaking to us all day. He took to wandering from room to room, stopping occasionally to listen to the winds. We retreated into our work, making no mention of the dark ones, and contenting ourselves with brief exchanges on the sandstorm and how fascinatingly dreary it was outside. 

In the following days, the newspapers and televisions declared the decisive defeat of the dark ones, asserting that those who stayed indoors did so not out of compliance with their demands, but in order to avoid the sandstorm. 

A massive flower festival was announced in the public parks and gardens. I took my daughter on a stroll to the closest garden. We met no one on the streets, but the garden was crowded with visitors, all wearing black. We wandered between the florists and flowering plants, and I took several photos of her with the flowers she liked. I bought a few varieties of cacti, she chose a gardenia plant to look after, and we hurried out of the garden, trying not to look at anyone. 

Nobody could admit that the whole city now wore black, including the reporters who had hailed the failure of the dark ones and their militant followers. 

Everyone went striding with their black clothes and fixed gazes, as if measuring the air with their eyes. The writings on the walls were but relics of a distant, forgotten age. 

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Mansoura Ez-Eldin is an Egyptian award-winning author of ten books. Her book, Walks in Shanghai, received the Ibn Battuta Prize for travel literature 2021; her novel, Emerald Mountain, received the award of the best Arabic novel in 2014 from Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF). In 2009, she was selected for the Beirut39 as one of the 39 best Arab authors below the age of 40. Her writing has appeared, among other places, in Granta, The New York Times, A Public Space, and The Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

The story in its original language, “ربيع داكن”, has been republished here, with permission from the author.

Khaled Rajeh is a writer and literary translator from Baakleen, Lebanon. His essays and translations have appeared in ArabLit, 91st Meridian, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. He holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where he is pursuing a PhD.