I can’t keep in mind how I obtained the sequinned skirt on however I’m fairly positive the eyeliner was wobbly. Each arms in a solid doesn’t precision cat-eye make. But it surely was New 12 months’s Eve and what’s the purpose for those who’re not going to glitter, and I’m an Egyptian in New York so the black eyeliner was virtually a nationwide responsibility.
After which I went not far away, crossed the road and entered Chez Lucienne, my native and the neighbourhood French restaurant, foolishly with no reservation, and obtained a desk anyway as a result of all of the waiters knew me. I may let you know which nation every of them had supported within the earlier 12 months’s World Cup as a result of I used to be the one particular person on the bar in the midst of the day watching matches being held hours away in South Africa.
Is that what house is? The place there’ll all the time be a spot on the desk for you?
I moved to the US from Cairo in 2000 and, like many immigrants, my ft walked first to Seattle after which to New York Metropolis the place I relocated in 2002, whereas my coronary heart and thoughts had been nonetheless in Cairo. After which at a protest I’d flown to Cairo to hitch close to Tahrir Sq. in November 2011, on the day that the US was marking Thanksgiving, Egyptian riot police broke my left arm and fractured my proper hand in two locations and sexually assaulted me, and shattered my coronary heart into extra of a multitude than a dropped 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
I flew again to New York Metropolis a few days later, bewildered and greater than bothered because it more and more dawned on me how toddler can do with each arms in plaster.
I didn’t must be alone for the 2011 vacation season. I wanted solitude to assemble myself, the items I’m, to misquote Toni Morrison.
The Egyptian novelist and Nobel prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz stated: “Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.” And that New 12 months’s Eve at Chez Lucienne, I finished operating.
The desk that my fellow football-supporting waiters had made for me within the packed eating space was cheek-by-jowl with a homosexual couple. I launched myself as a result of there’s no room for politely avoiding eye contact while you’re virtually consuming off one another’s dishes. They in flip gingerly requested me what occurred to my arms. My casts introduced me in all places I went and I started hesitating telling individuals concerning the assault as a result of I typically ended up comforting strangers who cried upon discovering out.
As an alternative, my neighbours at Chez Lucienne adopted me.
We in contrast dishes, slid over parts to one another’s plates for tasting, clinked glasses for toasts, had been the primary individuals dancing to the stay band, and I launched them to my football-supporting buddies as if I had been gathering collectively completely different branches of my household.
That night time, I remembered why each Egyptian from Cairo that I do know who’s ever visited New York Metropolis feels instantly at residence. The noise, the crowds, the closeup encounters, and most of all of the chaos that retains our coronary heart beating.
I used to be alone that New 12 months’s Eve however not a stranger. In contrast to in London, the place I spent my childhood, we discuss to strangers on the subway and in queues in New York Metropolis. And even on avenue corners. Quickly after I returned to my now residence city from my earlier residence city, a person on a avenue the place I used to be ready for a good friend pointed to my casts and requested what occurred. I instructed him and he rotated, with out saying a phrase, and lifted his T-shirt to point out me a tattoo that lined his whole again with the phrases “Fuck the Police”.
A 12 months later I had the title of the road the place riot police attacked me, and which has turn into an icon of the 25 January 2011 revolution, tattooed on to my left forearm, proper subsequent to the scar from surgical procedure to straighten the bone the riot police had damaged. And subsequent to “Mohamed Mahmoud” I’ve tattooed the Arabic phrase for freedom, as a result of having your coronary heart shattered right into a thousand items is liberation of types.
“The wound is where the light enters,” the Sufi poet Rumi says.
And that night time at Chez Lucienne, my sequinned skirt was like a thousand items of sunshine, gathering all of the items of me, guiding me residence.
I fucking love you, New York Metropolis.
