Did I emasculate the boy from Shobrakheit with my independence? The irony is that I do need him. Only in his absence do I realize how much his arm pretzeled through mine protected me on the streets of downtown Cairo, his looming, shaggy-headed shadow signaling to other men in the vicinity that I was spoken for, that I had a people at my back, as he used to say, and could not be harassed without serious consequence.
