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America, like every other place in the world, is a place where some people sleep and some people other people dream.
Americans love labels. They help them know what to expect. Sometimes, though, I think labels stop them from thinking.
Hoping, I’m starting to think, might be the bravest thing a person can do.
I’ve decided it is very American to have the audacity to claim that three things add up to everything.
Jude, those parts aren’t for girls like us. What do you mean? We’re the type of girls that design the sets, that stay backstage. We’re not girls who glow in the spotlight. I take another bite of the soup and it tastes like home, it tastes like the future. But I want to be, I 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.
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.
There is an Arabic proverb that says: She makes you feel like a loaf of freshly baked bread. It is said about the nicest kindest people. The type of people who help you rise.
I ask why this attack in particular is so upsetting to Americans. Why not last week in Lebanon? Or the week before in Pakistan? Layla tells me it is because this attack took place in the West. She tells me Americans expect bombs to go off in Lebanon in Pakistan in my beloved Syria, but not in France, Britain, Canada.
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. That they all see people like me and think violence sadness war.
When I was younger and I used to get upset, Issa would say to me: Too much sunshine makes a desert. I wonder, though, if it is possible for there to be too much rain. I am starting to feel like I am drowning, like I don’t know how much longer I can stay afloat.
