One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

There’s an unbridgeable distance. I know it, and I think my children can already sense it. I tell my daughter one day I’ll take her to the place I was born, and she can see the pyramids for herself, figure out what’s really going on with the Sphinx’s nose. I tell her about the beaches along the north coast where the coral’s neon bright and you can swim right up and pet the fishies. I warn her it won’t be like anything she’s experienced before. You know how people stop at red lights here? I ask. Well, when we get there, don’t be surprised if…I pause, try to figure out how to prepare a child for what, relative to all she’s known so far in life, would come across as complete chaos. People there have made a language out of honking horns, I say, and she laughs, and I know deep down I might never take her back.