Book-tok I saw a tiktok about a book called "If an Egyptian cannot speak English" In the video she said that a lot of scenes were based in Cafe Riche and the owners (fictional versions of them?) were featured She said she was reading the book there and asked the owners if they were aware that they were featured She said they said that it's not fiction Maybe they were pulling her leg, or maybe she was being dramatic and what they actually said was it's not entirely fiction, maybe she made it all up Maybe this is my neurospiciness and I'm reading too much into a very short tiktok In any case, as a TCK Egyptian who used to sit in Cafe Riche in my uni days I was sold I'm a quarter of the way through the book And I can't explain how I feel about it It's a bit surreal, imagine a fairytale about your home turf Fairytale is the wrong word Orientalism is also the wrong word The author teaches at my university now She's Egyptian TCK too The Egyptian American girl character and the small town boy character are younger than me Frequenting places I used to frequent I don't know what I'm cringing at It feels a bit like when we were on the news during the revolution That's in the book too Which is trippy Yes it's painful and trippy and familiar and disorienting There's a movie lens, but because of the title, because of the author -- I don't know, maybe like panning out to see a camera shooting in a Bergman film Hello I am meta storytelling, think about intersectionality, we will jump between cultures a lot, hello, hello I'm a few years older and not as American And also not as Egyptian My experiences were different A few years made my storyline different But there are things I intimately understand and I feel this tiny panic that they will be misconstrued or fetishized And I wonder why I feel defensive about a perspective/experiences that are clearly shared...and somehow enduring Maybe it's those years Being in Egypt in your 20s when Gmail was invite only and Facebook was this weird uni student club There were lines, there was distance, borders were more like borders And the concern was that the cultural distances were turning into chasms Talking about how 9/11 changed everything instead of how the revolution changed everything Or how social media changed everything It also made me feel kind of innocent It's strange to feel old and innocent I don't feel wise and I feel robbed I was told the white hairs and textured skin were supposed to come with sanguine understanding I wanted one of those smug knowing smiles too I'm still lost, I titled this diary well, good job me Back in my daaay... Back in my day, my bubbled experience of Egyptian counterculture didn't have as many drugs or that kind of sex There was sex, it was loaded too, but with different implications and not so much um...vocabulary? The confidence of niche porn categories didn't exist yet On the otherhand, some things were more overtly political The friends who took me to Cafe Riche were children of communists and politically active (I don't know if I ever wrote about when I went to jail, thats for another entry) And the artsy fartsies didn't have private studios or websites-- and the people with disposable income didnt buy that kind of art, they wanted reproductions that fit in their Roccoco style living rooms It was a tiny group of people who kept selling and buying from each other I remember smirking at this painting that moved from gallery to gallery to gallery (it was good, big canvas portrait, chiaroscuro) This book is grey, life so much greyer It's uncomfortable and I respect that I've been in the suburbs and I haven't been around young people for a very long time I joke about feeling like I was in a bunker a lot, especially with corona -- this book makes that feeling sharper I'm very invested, maybe I'll write about it again when I'm done |