Competition Twenty-Eight Winning Flash Fiction: Cassettes and Cigarette Smoke by Amy Photiou
Cairo, 1984.
Ashraf leaned against the dusty wall of a record shop on Talaat Harb Street, Walkman headphones around his neck, the low hum of Fairuz barely audible. His backpack bulged with bootleg cassettes—Umm Kulthum, Boney M, and, tucked behind the rest, Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
A man in a frayed suit stopped at his corner. “You have Western?”
Ashraf gestured for the man to wait whilst rifling through the plastic cases and handing him a couple.
The man held them, fan like, in his large hands, squinting. “Do you even know what this means?” His tilted his chin upward.
Ashraf shrugged. “It’s about walls. Inside. Outside. Not fitting in.”
He returned the next week. And the next. Brought books wrapped in newspaper—The Outsider, Children of the Alley, Giovanni’s Room. “Read,” he’d say. “And don’t just swallow. Chew.”
They read on a rooftop above the Walaa koshary shop, surrounded by laundry lines, the adhan oozing from distant speakers. A haze of smoke between them – cigarettes and something older. The man spoke of silences heavier than speeches, of things better hidden in margins than spoken aloud.
Then one Thursday, he didn’t show. Friday passed. Then a week.
Ashraf asked no one. You don’t ask in Cairo when someone disappears.
Instead, he began recording. Not songs, but life sounds. Street noise, calls to prayer, laughter, clattering crockery, the passing chant of protesters. Over it, his own voice reading lines from the man’s books. Memory on tape.
He slid the first cassette across a café table to a stranger with the same worn look. Said nothing. Just nodded.
Later that night, on the rooftop, Ashraf pressed play.
Static. Then:
“Freedom is not a gift. It’s a quiet refusal. Listen carefully.”
He did.
And so did others.
Amy Photiou is a Hospital Tobacco Cessation Practitioner with a strong interest in health psychology. Amy is based in Norwich and enjoys writing short fiction.
www.linkedin.com/in/amy-photiou
Image – FFF
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I really enjoyed your story, Amy. I liked the way you packed in so much detail and atmosphere in a piece of flash fiction.
Great work. Thanks for sharing!
This is filled with wonderful visual and oral imagery. It left me with a warm appreciation of books and music and the freedom they bring, as well as the quiet power they hold.
Thank you for your comments!
Amy
Amy thanks. I enjoyed the way you quickly created a sense of mystery, tension and suspense, along with the idea that the truth is hiding in plain site.