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Had we been less occupied with documenting the losses, circulating names and dates, video footage, we might have noticed earlier that everything was not as it seemed.
I resent him because I recognize him. This desperation to refashion ourselves into the most pleasing form makes fools of us both.
Am I safer with him on the street than in my own home? Am I safer on the balcony than in the windowless kitchen? Would he have thrown a glass at me in any other room?
He doesn’t say, You can’t see your friends anymore. But after a full day of teaching, if I am late returning or if I return only to leave him again for the bars in Zamalek or Café Riche, I know he will be waiting, counting every minute I am gone, chewing them like seeds.
He doesn’t say, Stay with me, or Hurry back, but there is always a fight when I come home.
It’s a fashion accessory, Mama. Oppression as handbag.
THE MOST DEPRESSING KIND OF RELATIONSHIP is one without clearly demarcated roles of victim and abuser, where the partners take turns leading, as in a Madrid-style schottische.
If the boy from Shobrakheit was controlling, it’s because he felt more emotionally invested than I did, and therefore more precarious. If he felt precarious, it’s because he was.
As soon as you begin rejecting a man, you have to be twice as polite. There’s a danger between us, but I’m not always sure who it belongs to. Which of us needs protection and which of us should be afraid?
Part of what keeps us in these patterns is the feeling that our abuser is unique? That he’s not like others? And we have to protect him from the judgment of a world that doesn’t understand
It would have been easy to leave Cairo behind forever, but instead you continue to return there every day, to remember the city, the violence, and the boy himself, who is the dark heart of your book … Almost worth it now, wouldn’t you say?
