If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

by Noor Naga

I’m learning slowly that having money and the option to leave frays any claim I have to this place. It turns

out that to be clean in Egypt is just to be free of Egypt, to exercise the choice to stay or go elsewhere, which most of the population cannot do.

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.