48 post breakfast The fussing was baba, I guess they're going to be out for a while They did show up at dawn I heard Aly snoring He got that from uncle Saeed Aly is four years older than me He was more of a socialite than I was back in the day There were awkward moments of overlap People couldn't believe we were cousins He was this goofy, green eyed, Hugh Grant haired white guy, conservative publicly but a party animal A banker One of Cairo's most eligible bachelors (So was his older brother but he was less gregarious and had run away to Sweden) I was the short haired tanned Asian American in weird plays about vaginas Egyptians come in all shapes and colors but it still really threw everyone Aly was my favorite as a kid He's very very very silly and he'd always pull faces at boring stiff family gatherings and make us laugh And he never refused to give us piggy back rides His parents really helped me when my mama passed away There's a Muslim ritual of washing the body before burial I can't talk about it yet I'm so grateful to his mother Tante Iman was always warm and cuddly And uncle Saeed made my sister and I laugh that day in the car He said, "We're all going too" It seems prophetic now because he passed a few months after my mama We lost tante Iman to covid When Aly said he was getting married to a Belarusian woman Everyone felt too sorry for him to criticize/ask him if he had any idea what the hell he was doing I don't think he would've done it if Tante Iman was still here I grew up with him, he's my cousin and I love him But this is such a shitshow and so triggering for me as someone raised by a foreign mom I'm not playing 'missing link' again I don't know I have no right to talk about what makes a relationship successful I'm a commitment-phobe who barely keeps house plants alive Tante Z says the village is hosting a DJ at the beach tonight Might be fun to dress up and jiggle I think I'll last about 5 minutes before my ears hurt and I start hyperventilating but I'll try |