Cairo Calling

Reflections on Eid in the City

a photo from the new grand museum in cairo. worth a visit.

I am in Cairo.

I am in Cairo, once again.

I am in Cairo, and the last time I was here (also for Eid), we spent the entire trip crumpled in front of 24 hour news, watching our city and country fall apart. I did BBC interviews using my iPhone 12 front camera and watched the hunched figure of my grandmother climb onto an evacuation flight on the international news. My aunt asked me to stop speaking to the press, in case her family faced retaliation. I made Tiktoks. I clawed out my beating, broken heart out of my chest for all to see. I tried to believe them when they said it will all be over in a few days, a week max.

I am in Cairo, two years later, and the war is still not over.

But I am here, and like meeting a child after a few years, I am shocked by developments everyone else has become accustomed to.

Sudan has come to Cairo.

For the lucky ones, at least.

My father and aunt argue with their elders who want to return, now that the army has reclaimed the capital. Elders sit wrapped in colourful toubs in soulless Cairo apartments, physically safe but shorn of their context, their meaning, what they might consider their lives.

There is nothing to go back to.

There is everything to go back for.

The arguments are passionate, no holds barred. No running water, no electricity, what food will you eat! But these pleas fall on unlistening ears. They want to go home.

What is there for us here but death?

I ask my aunt if she misses Sudan. She laughs, rueful.

What is Sudan? What does it mean to be Sudanese?

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I am beginning to understand there really is no going back.

We - my nuclear family - were the migrants once. The family that moved away, the branch that sprouted out from the main trunk - connected, but somehow different.

Now, the rest of the family was asking the same questions I had been asking my entire life. What does it mean to be Sudanese?

We have become a family of migrants. Where is the Sudanese in that?

I feel the burden of responsibility on my shoulders, squeezing down on my torso, roiling my stomach. My back curves with the weight. How on earth are we going to hold onto who we are?

I worry I am not strong enough.

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I used to visit my family on one street. Now, to see the same people, I have to go to four different continents.

My dad repeats this line over and over as we visit the houses of relatives on the first day of Eid. It soon transpires we are transplanting a distinctly Sudanese custom onto an Egyptian context. Nobody does visits like this in Egypt, we are told, because everyone lives too far apart. The traffic, the heat - whatever. In Egypt, they don’t visit each other on Eid, they just call.

No matter. We must bring something with us, even if it is only our presence.

I wonder if we will ever visit all the relatives on the same street again.

It feels unlikely.

I do not know how to hold this grief.

I am in Cairo and it is easier this time, but the ease frightens me. We have normalised the horrific, the unthinkable. But what else is there to do?

I curse myself for not taking more photos. Not recording more of my elders’ tales. I wonder, if I ever have children, will they know of their history, my birthplace, only through stories and photographs? Will they only receive the diluted version of who we are/were, a photocopy of a photocopy?

I never imagined we would be here. This is the ugly truth.

Cairo forces me to reckon with the fact that I always believed Khartoum would be there. That the family was constant. That there would be somewhere to return.

I am in Cairo, not in Khartoum, and my heart is in my hands and half my family never want to set foot in Sudan again. The other half is desperate, yearning to feel its earth and I feel entitled to none of it. I feel entitled to nothing, no place, no language nor custom and I wonder is this freedom, or is it captivity? My tongue is heavy and my vocab rusty and so I spent my nights looking up Arabic courses in London, Cairo, Damascus. I do a quiz and learn I am ‘lower intermediate’ and wonder whether the fact this was (is?) my mother tongue makes any difference.

I am in Cairo and it is hot.

I am in Cairo and the world keeps moving forward.

I am in Cairo and while this city is nothing like Khartoum, I am simply grateful that I can visit. Get a visa, enter the country, hug my kin. Family is not straight forward. This city isn’t, either. But it’s all we’ve got right now. That’s got to be something, right?

an old photo of me in the desert, probably about twenty years ago now. subhanallah.

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Thank you all for reading this newsletter. It feels nice to be back in conversation with you all.

I hope you enjoyed all the guest posts during Ramadan. From visiting Buddhist monasteries to publishing a book, we had such a range of wonderful submissions! Thank all who wrote in - hopefully I’ve replied to everyone now¹. I’ll continue to provide the space for the occasional guest post in the future, so do get in touch if you’d like to write for this newsletter inshallah.

1. if I’ve missed you, please send me another email!