All these years since I left Egypt, when I visit I stay with my sister in her apartment in the heart of downtown Cairo, a time to have her all for myself, so we got closer and we both shared old stories, and old memories.
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The Salafy Bunch… meet my family
This particular family reception was surreal: the mood was celebratory but cautious; everyone was there, all my brothers with their very long beards; the nieces in their hijab, which they take off once they get home. (Wearing hijab is complicated. It has its religious and social rules. If I’m the only visitor in the room, they can leave them off, and they do. It just depends on who comes in the room if the hijab will be on or off: if he is a brother, his sisters can leave their hijab off, but other nieces have to put them on. If someone comes to the door, the person…
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THE BRILLIANCE OF AN AVERAGE MAN
My dad taught me everything I needed to know about life, without ever sitting down and talking with me about life; Please meet my dad. My dad was a small petite man, with an enormous nose and sharp piercing small eyes; he wasn’t a heavy-handed, intimidating father figure. However, he believed that to survive raising a large family of 10 on $7 monthly salary, you needed to be vigilant in reconstructing our family values.First, to put our house in order, he gave us character-based nicknames; our original Arabic names had been either those of a prophet or a servant of God, Muhammed, Ahmed, Abdelraffe, Aabdellnasser, Abdelaal, etc… didn’t reflect…
