by Sylvia Pamuk

We met in Zamalek, on a cool February night at an expat party full of drunk Americans. The way he told it to our friends later is different from what I remember: He saw me with a friend on the apartment balcony, he tells them, and was determined to talk to me. So he did. The story is suave and controlled, and everything he is not.

It was the early months of 2012, and the fuss surrounding the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution had just died down. I was studying abroad at the American University of Cairo and had been living in Egypt since August. The second semester students were fresh from America and drunk on the power of having come to such an exotic locale while their friends flew to Europe for the semester. My girlfriend and I counted the number of State Department wannabes and laughed, deciding that we refused to take anyone present seriously.

I saw my girlfriend meet someone’s eyes over my shoulder. I turned. His words tumbled out suddenly as if he had been holding his breath.

“Can I borrow your lighter?”

I looked up at him. I agreed to exchange my lighter for his name.

“Layth,” he said. He lit his cigarette. His face was thrown in sharp relief by the flame: strong brow, aquiline nose, a handful of springtime freckles tossed carelessly across high cheekbones.

“Oh?” His eyes flickered when I met them. “Where’s that from?”

“Palestine,” he said and handed me my lighter.

Palestine, he explained, via Washington D.C. He’d been coming to Cairo since he was about 12 when his father took up a teaching post at the university. He played the drums and guitar, he loved to dance, he said he was back in Egypt indefinitely to improve his Arabic. We talked for hours, and I brought him home.

My roommate was talking up someone cute in the kitchen, so he kissed me in the dark on the balcony. I twisted my fingers in his tawny curls as strains of music from felucca boats on the Nile drifted up from the riverbank ten floors below. It wasn’t until I met him in the light of day that I realized how high he had been that night.

Tongues tied, hands twisted, we met for coffee on a bright terrace at the university. I should have known it was over then, but it took several weeks and another drunk conversation at another crowded party for him to tell me that he actually wanted to see someone else. I held my head high, stayed at the party, and refused to cry until I was in the middle of the Eastern Desert the next morning, driving with friends to Ain Sokhna for the weekend.

One month later, he came back to me.

Your first mistake: You don’t ask why. You take it as it comes, his pleas for forgiveness and his elation at being taken back, because by now it’s the beginning of the end, during your last six weeks of studying abroad in Cairo.

You are ravenous, you are desperate, you want everything before it ends, and so you take everything he has to give: the city’s madness and noise, sweat, and traffic and springtime dust storms, the call for the dawn prayer ringing in your ears as you tumble into bed together. The warmth of the afternoon sun on your skin as you sit in one of Zamalek’s sidewalk cafes, dodging Tahrir sit-ins on the way home from the university bus stop, drinking coffee on your balcony and admiring the way the sun glitters on the Nile before eight in the morning. You skip over dogshit on sidewalks, smoke inside cafes and bars, and breathe deeply of the night air during the long cool drive down the Corniche to Ma’adi after a night of sweaty dancing at Cairo Jazz Club. You kiss hungrily in dark elevators, yet are unable to hold hands in the street. You meet strangers outside the famous downtown ‘ahwa Horriya and end up dancing in someone’s dirty living room two hours later, the bottoms of your bare feet collecting fallen ash from the hashish and your blood pulsing to the beat of the drum beneath Layth’s palms.

Whenever I think I miss Layth, I realize I’m longing for the life he showed me how to live in Cairo: the paradox of ease and adrenaline, the long nights and lazy afternoons, the music from delivery boys’ mopeds, the cheap cigarettes, the cane juice from streetside kiosks, nearly getting hit by cars while crossing the street and cats wandering the night, weaving between beggars on littered streets. I miss not worrying about the price of rent or taxis, I miss the smell of the Nile in April when it’s not yet too hot in the city. I miss steamier May nights on the rooftop terrace at the Greek Club, my favorite restaurant in Midan Talaat Harb. We drank ouzo and ate stuffed grape leaves that weren’t as good as his aunt’s and people-watched, laughing as our group of friends found itself joining parties with the next table over.

I miss Layth’s golden moments — when he was comfortable and relaxed, sweet and open. I’ll always remember how everything about him was like shirts left too long on the line, bleached by the sun: washed-out pale blue eyes, gilded tips of otherwise dark lashes, tawny hair the color of a lion’s mane. How his flannel shirts smelled of Marlboro Reds and Egyptian laundry detergent, how the fine lines around his eyes disappeared in peaceful sleep.

I left Cairo during the presidential elections of 2012 to work as a translator at a small news station in the West Bank for the month of June. I left my luggage at Layth’s apartment and when I returned five weeks later, it was with too many photos of weekends spent with old friends in Tel Aviv for us to go back to the way we were.

We haven’t spoken in over a year. I assume he’s still in Cairo, waking to the cry of the muezzin each morning and watching the sun glint blood orange off thousands of skyscraper windows each afternoon, but Cairo is a different world now. If one day we meet again, I don’t know if we’ll be friends. That brief life we had has vanished, the friends we knew have come and gone, and the Cairo we loved — blissfully tucked between the reigns of Mubarak and Morsi — has disappeared.

Sylvia Pamuk is a pseudonym for a graduate student and writer who divides her time between London, Istanbul, and Chicago.

Original post and featured image source: The Matador Network

By Brown Girl Magazine

Brown Girl Magazine was created by and for South Asian womxn who believe in the power of storytelling as a … Read more ›

Photo by IndianFaces via Shutterstock.com

I organize play dates for my children. They’re friendships remind me of when I was younger when Fridays were consistently set aside for my friends. Now, it seems play is indeed meant for childhood and work is for aging adults. We often can’t find time for ourselves, let alone our friends, who are busy working mothers like ourselves. Or we moved into unreachable corners of this globe, far away from any means of physical communication. It’s fair to say, it’s hard to stay close to friends like when we were in college. Nowadays, it’s easier to travel, but more difficult to bond with others. “My Friend” asserts that we should not end let our friendships fall by the wayside. Even with physical distance and conflicting schedules, we keep our friendships close with kind words on phone calls, regular FaceTime calls, or even encouraging social media comments. Friendship doesn’t end once we become adults.

[Read Related: Connecting my Stories With Those of my mom and Grandma]

My Friend

The turbulent sea of a ticking clock,
A constant chime of chores
Unfolded laundry, unpaid bills.
For unplanned surprises, Life’s infinite stores

An achy neck, a heavy head,
A forever strong of burdens
Fleeting as they may be
Yet as real as my scribbling pens

In this world of lonely battles
Filled with competing souls
It’s you, my friend
Your comforting words, long strolls

Your phone calls, your laughter,
You listening when I’m remiss,
Your steady support,
The source of all my bliss.

[Read Related: 4 Brown Girls Who Write-U.K. Asian Sisterhood Changing the Dynamics of Poetry]

The opinions expressed by the guest writer/blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Brown Girl Magazine, Inc., or any employee thereof. Brown Girl Magazine is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the guest writer/bloggers. This work is the opinion of the blogger. It is not the intention of Brown Girl Magazine to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. If you’d like to submit a guest post, please follow the guidelines we’ve set forth here.

By Mars D. Gill

Mars D. Gill is the author of "House of Milk and Cheese" and "Letters from the Queen". She writes mainstream … Read more ›

Photo by kittirat roekburi via Shutterstock.com

Social media has stretched a number of news headlines:

“Social media rots kids’ brains.”

“Social media is polarizing.”

Yet those most affected by social media ideals are the teenage users. Apps like Instagram and TikTok perpetuate an image of perfection that is captured in pictures and 30-second videos. As a result, many young women chase this expectation endlessly. “Her” personifies this perfection in an unattainable figure the narrator has always wished to be. These ideals deteriorate mental health, create body dysmorphia, promote a lack of self-esteem, and much more. Even so, social media is plagued by filters and editing—much of what we hope to achieve isn’t even real. Therefore, young women, much like the narrator of “Her,” strive for a reality that doesn’t even exist.

[Read Related: The Emotional Roller Coaster of Getting Your Legs Waxed for the First Time]

Her

When she walked into my life
Her smile took up two pages of description
In a YA novel.
My arms could wrap around her waist twice
If she ever let anyone get that close
Her hair whipped winds with effortless beach waves
And a hint of natural coconut
Clothing brands were created around her
“One Size Fits All” one size to fit the girl who has it all
With comments swarning in hourglasses
But when sharp teeth nip at her collar,
She could bite back biting back
And simply smirked with juicy apple lips
Red hearts and sympathy masking condescension
“My body doesn’t take away from the beauty of yours”
“We are all equal, we are all beautiful”
Beauty
A sword she wields expertly
Snipping, changing,
Aphrodite in consistent perfection
Cutting remarks with sickly sweet syrup
And an innocent, lethal wink
When she walked into my life
She led my life.
My wardrobe winter trees
Barren, chopped in half
Unsuited for the holidays
Mirrors were refracted under in my gaze
Misaligned glass was the only explanation
For unsymmetrical features
And broken hands
Still I taped them fixed
Over and over
Poking, prodding
Hoping to mold stomach fat like wet clay
Defy gravity,
Move it upward
To chest
Instead of sagging beneath a belt on the last hole
In the spring
She would stir me awake at 2 AM
“You need to be me”
Lies spilled from her tongue but
Solidified, crystallized
Fabrication spelled dichotomy
And I drifted farther out to sea
When she walked out of my life,
I was drowning.
Reliance had me capsized
Others witnessed
Furrowed brows and glances away
Like spectators of a shark attack
They can watch but the damage is done
They clung to my mangled pieces
Gravestones spelled
“Stressed”
“Depressed”
But I was mourning too
Today I looked back at my mirror
But glass turned into prism
Broken pieces rainbow
Colors coating clothes
She didn’t pick
Aphrodite
Perception changing
She wasn’t perfect
Just lost at sea

[Read Related: Finding Freedom from Gender Roles Through Poetry]

The opinions expressed by the guest writer/blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Brown Girl Magazine, Inc., or any employee thereof. Brown Girl Magazine is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the guest writer/bloggers. This work is the opinion of the blogger. It is not the intention of Brown Girl Magazine to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. If you’d like to submit a guest post, please follow the guidelines we’ve set forth here.

By Kashvi Ramani

Kashvi Ramani is a writer, actress, songwriter, and singer from Northern Virginia. She has been writing songs, poetry, scripts, and … Read more ›

Photo Courtesy of Varsha Panikar

“After so Long” is a poetry film created for Simha’s EP, which is streaming on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. The poem was collaboratively written by Simha, a U.S. native, and Jae, who is based in India, during the 2020 lockdown. “After so Long” was recited by Simha and their parents. In 2022, I directed and produced the film through my studio, Star Hopper. “After so Long” premiered on Nowness Asia in March 2022.

By Varsha Panikar

Varsha Panikar (they/he) is a filmmaker, writer and multi-disciplinary artist from India. They are the co-founder of Star Hopper, a … Read more ›