Coming Back to Amr

I find myself clinging to what this is, what Egypt is to me: Sheesha and lemon juice with friends, sharing a handful of nuts with a taxi driver, randomly meeting a kid named Amr and going budget-shopping with him for his mother and sister.

I’m beginning to see the end, now. Months, weeks, days, winding down. But I don’t feel “done,” or like I’m ready to go in any way. My ears perk up every time I hear of a new opportunity – like a chance to roam Syria on the cheap with D, or getting paid pennies to teach English in Yemen.

But I’m also realizing that if I make the current “Cairo” period simply episode #203 in my life, I risk marginalizing it and isolating it. It will turn into something I always want to recapture – a story for the end of the bar, that “one thing I did once” – instead of just another thread in the weave of my life.

And that could endanger my future. It will make it to hard to come back here, or anywhere. I might get trapped on the Island that is America.

Egypt will always be part of me, who I am. But I refuse to celebrate it or worship it. The day I leave will not be the end of an era. It will just be another day in June.

With possibilities wide, wide open.