If he wanted an American girl, he could have found a proper freckled blonde with bouncing ponytail; there are enough of them tramping around downtown with their calves and armpits bare, doing “research,” learning Arabic, romanticizing even the garbage heaps, the fleas on every weasel. And if he wanted an Egyptian, why not a homegrown goose who can hang on to his elbow when they walk the corniche, hide her mouth when she smiles, and practically die of giddiness when he steals an elevator kiss? Was it because I was neither of him nor truly other? Not family and not quite stranger—a thresholded,
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