If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

by Noor Naga

“I am not what you think I am. You are what you think I am.” —Instagram caption by @hanaperlas, November 5, 2016

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

Arabic: this language that had only ever existed for me in kitchens and bedrooms, baby talk, breakfast chatter, Eid mornings at the gym-cum-mosque (before my father converted to astrology), goodnight kisses after Kalila wa Dimna, or fever-talk when I was feverish at age five.

The boy from Shobrakheit hot-wires an intimacy just by sounding like him. He wishes me not a good morning, but a childlike morning or a morning of flowers. He texts, I hope your day will be like the birds. I hope your night will be like the childhood of trees. Don’t be sad, my moon. I have a remembering of the lives I didn’t live.

QUESTION: What if female arousal is just the belief that you will not die at this man’s hands?

QUESTION: Is it arrogant to grieve the loss of what you never had?

I feel that love should flow freely, as water does from fountains. Let me ask you: Is it possible to contemplate a thing—any thing at all—without sadness?

QUESTION: If the beast is already in your house, does that make the wilderness safer?

QUESTION: If an Egyptian cannot speak English, who is telling his story?

How to say passive-aggressive in Arabic? Guilt trip? Victim complex? How to say emotional blackmail? What is unforgivable in English, in Arabic has no name I know.

We hide our finances from each other but the numbers chafe between our bodies while we sleep, so that we wake up full of static, agitated, zapping everything we touch.

QUESTION: How long can you hate yourself before everyone else hates you too?

I’m not a violent person, but there is a violence that moves through you like a live current when you hate what someone has made you become.

It was one of those ugly cries you don’t want to see in the small, square representation of yourself at the bottom of the screen, the one you will allow only in front of pets and mothers, never males of any relation.

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

Now that the fun is done, though, the presence of a male in my space is nauseating.

I spend all night dreaming that Kendrick Lamar has stolen my hair and run away rapping over his shoulder, Bitch, be humble, lil’ bitch, sit down.

I’ve dated enough to understand how I am used by men who reject themselves:

Question: How much vanity does it take to be a healer? Answer: an astrological amount.