Invisible Leavings

I miss Aswan and the Aswanians so much. I miss the Nile at Aswan, so calm and blue, flowing like a true gift to Egypt from God, a source of our livelihood and heritage, and a symbol of our softness, often manifested in our songs, dance and dialects. There is almost no amount of stomping in the dances native to Southern Egypt, where our civilization began more than 7000 years ago. I think it’s because of the serenity of the river that flowed into our land and gave it its mildness. Even when it inundated such land, the Nile was never thought of as a threat to Egyptians, only a gift to be thankful for. So, it’s no wonder that Aswanians and Nubians dance with the gentle grace that they do. I miss the faces of the proud, happy, and kind Aswanians...people who’d share their food with you when they can’t be certain they’ll have enough for themselves the next day. There is a world of comfort in just being on that kind land of the ancestors, where they thought of Egypt as their life and death, ...

My hands are trembling while writing this, but thankfully after a couple of sips of orange juice and the very welcome thought of eating carbs for lunch, they're trembling way less than they did during the chat session with Netflix that I'm about to share.  Half an hour ago I made the decision to confront Netflix's customer service with as much emotional stability as years of being subjected to Islamophobic rhetoric could allow me. The damn emotional labour, man. I had noticed a new blurb on my phone's Netflix app two days ago, as I lazily scrolled through the latest titles in bed, a habit I've developed to soothe my mind in the hour or so just before succumbing to sleep. I'd associated this habit with a kind of happy, mundane ability to predict what I would be watching soon, thereby creating pockets of certainty in a world where reliable predictability has become very scarce, pandemic and all. But my world resists even such little privileges.  What a non-Muslim ...