If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

by Noor Naga

He said my name, searched my face the way strangers study the daughters of a niqab-wearing woman, noting the texture of their hair, the pucker of their mouths, aging the children’s faces in their minds, searching for the mother’s beauty.

Photography is a gorgeous corpse turning on the first night in its bed of soil. Photography is a shawl caught on the finger of a gnarled, eternal olive tree. Photography is not about victory; victory is viler, baser than the loll of a child’s head on that child’s own chest.