Home...sorta.

I just arrived in Egypt. I don’t have internet and I am not sure if I will have the chance to post this while I am here, but I feel like my arrival is blog worthy, so imma write it all down before I forget.

So we arrived in the new terminal in Cairo, quite literally taken right out of Europe. My feelings are sort of a paradox, I feel like it’s all a dream. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve wanted to visit for so long and now that it has happened, it just won’t register. It’s just I feel at home and out of place all at once. Usually when I come to Cairo, I forget about everything else, it’s like moving from one parallel universe to the other. This time, I am physically here, but I can accept that my life isn’t.

It’s funny though because at the airport was also the first time I feel like I have roots. Usually when I come back, a few members of our extended family pick us up from the airport, which is great of course. But this time, people who didn’t have to meet us at the airport by virtue of their DNA were there. My bestest friend in this universe and beyond and two of my closest friends ever. I even got flowers. No one has ever brought me flowers at an airport before. I have…people. In Egypt. What a strange thought. I have had a shit eating grin on my face ever since.

My family went back with us to our old apartment. It’s the greatest apartment we have ever lived in and some of my most important memories come from the period when we lived here. In fact, some of them still linger on. Like the neon green I chose to paint my room in. That night after our high school graduation, May came over and we had pizza. She ventured into my room, and when I asked her what she thought of my walls, she said ‘its like living in a cantaloupe’. My walls are still that color. All my drawers are stuffed to the brim with memories, tapes with recordings of my French orals, photo albums, IB notes, Sweet Valley High books, picture frames, jewelry, my Garfield shaped telephone. My life. I have settled into a comfortable familiarity in the span of a few short hours.

One blatant reminder that I don’t live here are my empty bookcases staring at me. My bookcases used to overflow with books. Now they are a mahogany brown emblem suspended in stark contrast to the cantaloupe walls. My book case is an essential part of any life I begin, it migrates, grows and self-develops through time. Instead of Sweet Valley High books and my school textbooks which were at home on these shelves for 2 years, in Geneva I have Bill Clinton’s autobiography, a couple of Pulitzer prize books and Kurt Vonnegut’s life works.

As I write this, it’s 1:30 am Cairo Time and I can hear the sound of a bunch of guys playing soccer in the street. Familiar sounds, perhaps even comforting. I am torn. Being here feels right. Being in Geneva feels right too. This bringing together of the Egyptian 16 year old version of myself with my much wiser, Genevan 21 year old self is exciting. I can’t wait to see what they have in common.