If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

by Noor Naga

“I am not what you think I am. You are what you think I am.”

How many questions can you ask before you expose who you are?

I’m caught between my desire to understand and my desire to appear as though I already understand.

When the foreigners left, it all went to shit. When it all went to shit, the foreigners left.

It’s as though the city were deliberately designed to resist comprehension and to discipline those who left for daring to return. You have either lived here and you know, or you never have and never will.

Can home be passed from one body to the next, like a secret whispered in the ear?

What is unforgivable in English, in Arabic has no name I know.

Only now, looking back, do I realize how terrible it is to subsist on just enough, without the joy of beautiful things.

Those outside of a language, of a culture, see furniture through a window and believe it is a room. But those inside know there are infinite rooms just out of view, and that they can always be more deeply inside.

We reward loyalty and punish women for choosing independence—for choosing survival, actually.