Week 19, 2026: Not-goodbye vine leaves
Letterboxd tells me I've watched at least two films a month every month for the past ten months or so, even though I never plan for it and can never recall my most recent watch. I’ve done my two for May this week: Bayn Al Qasrayn (1964) and Tiny Furniture (2010). Most people I know would watch one but not the other.
I’m reading Famesick, finally. I whole-heartedly recommend it if you’re in your twenties or a woman or neither one of those things. Lena is such a brilliant observer. She makes the funny look like it comes easy. I keep highlighting big chunky passages because I feel so deeply seen and understood by her experiences. There’s a bit where she talks about how, in her early twenties, she’d get acquainted with people much older than her and hear them use a common turn of phrase she’d never heard before and think they were a genius for coming up with that on the spot. I didn’t even know that this was a relatable twenty-something experience that you could write about, I thought I was just a gullible girl. And maybe that’s it, maybe it’s just nice to know there’s another late-blooming semite out there who finds solace in telling the truth.
I’m trying to get over this thing I have where I struggle to justify new clothes and shoes, the result of years of having a weird relationship with my body and my money. I recently wrote up what I imagine my coolest self is like, inspired by Aerie's post, and learned that my coolest self is extremely chill about her weight. She wears heels casually and plays a racket sport on the weekend. She’s a rodent owner, probably a hamster. She doesn’t find it so scary to drive or maybe she learned it’s okay that she does. Mint on the windowsill, home-pickled veggies, signature perfume. Her French is decent and her Arabic is as good as her English.
This one is nowhere near being ready to pull off wearing heels casually but she did recently write up a post in Arabic on her blog. We’re getting vulnerable here. On the very day I hit publish, I went out for breakfast at The Sunbird. Sunbird squared. I quizzed my family about our lineage while we dipped bread in various mezzes.
They tell me they’ll miss me but not with words. My mother passes me a russian doll and tells me I can keep it. When we hug, she kisses my shoulder. My father lays down on my bedroom floor because he has nothing to say but wants to be near me. I ask if the vine leaves that we’re having for lunch are goodbye vine leaves and my mother says they’re not goodbye vine leaves, they’re just regular vine leaves.
Mimi and I spend most evenings talking for hours. We sit in Hemingway’s in the early of the weekend taking turns exchanging frank stories and feelings. Sometimes I wish our conversations could be even more frank but I think the kind of honest I want from her, and most people, is a kind of honest that she isn’t even doing alone. Her threshold for listening to me be honest in a way that would make many mothers squirm is often enough for us both. She really is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. It’s crazy to me that she doesn’t see it.