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Kindle Notes & Highlights
In the summer, I always hold my nose to avoid the stench of fish and tourists that smell like hairspray and money and French perfume.
Issa used to love to sing American pop songs with me and Fatima at the top of his lungs. He knew every word of Madonna Whitney Houston Mariah Carey. Now he knows other words like revolution democracy and change, change, change.
Don’t laugh, she says and her voice cracks, thick with emotion, driving a rushing river between us, with her on one side and me on the other bank. I want to swim back toward her, but for the first time ever, I’m not sure how.
We arrive, in a city that I cannot pronounce, a city called Cincinnati.
He is an important doctor at an important hospital.
Omg this is UC Health, the hopital I was just released from.
Everything in America moves fast and is loud. Cars honking Traffic lights flashing Big billboards advertising hamburgers drinks an entirely new life. It seems like everything everyone is trying to sell you something. Sometimes I feel dizzy with want, sometimes I just feel dizzy.
Lucky. I am learning how to say it over and over again in English. I am learning how it tastes— sweet with promise and bitter with responsibility.
I have learned Americans love to say you know and then stop talking. They force you to fill in the hard parts, the things they are not brave enough to say.
It is hard to find a monologue, it is hard to find a place where my favorite actresses are allowed to speak without a man interrupting them before their full thought has been spoken.
And then there are the people on the street who never used to notice me before when I glided down Ludlow in my beautiful coat but now stop and turn their heads, their eyes watching me like I am a ticking time bomb.
That I cover my head not because I am ashamed forced or hiding. But because I am proud and want to seen as I am.
It takes me a while to process this, that what Layla is saying is that Americans think it’s normal for there to be violence in places where people like me are from, where people like me and people who look like me live.
It is beautiful and I tell her so, but I am also trying to tell her, You belong here. You make beautiful things.
