Sunbird

Week 2, 2026: Window seat

Sweating in January. On the way home from the pharmacy, having finally secured my Oratene top-up. I stop by the store for Chtoora labneh and a bag of Al Faiz ground coffee. Fine grind, dark mix, added-in cardamom. It’s good on the cezve. My dad takes his with sugar but that’s wrong, not only because he’s a diabetic. Coffee with cardamom reminds me of Christmas, feels like a special treat.

The week features several calls with my friends whom I love. I miss them all already. Who knows how long it’ll be before I can see any of them again. But the fog hovers close and soon I find myself in the doom again, stuck in a vulnerability hangover, loitering with what it means to be a friend, hating when I need more than somebody can give me.

My journal reads ‘second day of high tides. I think I’m getting on a flight to Cairo’. With no time to ponder big decisions, I follow tata around the kitchen as she shows me how to make kofta bil tahina, my favourite dish. The secret sauce is apple cider vinegar.

Then it’s Friday and I’m folding a stack of clothes that would let me avoid laundry for a few weeks. Seven books and three pairs of shoes, barbie pink nails and a belly full of rumaniyya. I get a phone call late at night from someone who works at the airline. They’re like did you see our email about the flight delay? and I say yes and go back to packing my bags.

Window seat, slumped against the window. There’s a guy in the middle seat separating me from my brother but I don’t mind. Then Customs, then the taxi, then he’s slapping a wad of cash on the table and asking if I need anything else before he catches the bus to Fayoum.

Alone in a Cairo apartment. The fridge is empty. Above it are some pantry items. Tomato puree, a small tub of garlic powder and two different types of table salt. The blinds are shut in all of the rooms. I can tell they haven’t been opened in years. My favourite part of the apartment is the balcony with the french doors. It looks over a bridge and a wide congested street.

There’s a strange energy about the flat that I never noticed on summer trips as a child. If you look closely, you can tell it has been abandoned. You can tell that people who lived in this flat had to leave it suddenly, leave everything exactly as is, not because they’d be back but because they had no other choice. Something was brewing, ‘leave or else’. So they left. And now I’m here.

There are books littered in the room where I’ll be staying. Mostly about Sharia law, except for the George B. Mair thriller titled Black Champagne: sex, voodoo and espionage in the Caribbean. I wash my bedsheets and my hair in the hope that a hygienic cleanse will give me the needed strength to leave the flat. I guess I’ll have a Winston and a water for lunch and call my friend. If Cleopetra is like Lana Del Rey, what’s her Pepsi Cola?

I end up not leaving the flat for another twelve hours, when H picks me up for Chili’s and groceries. The mall is empty, he says, because everyone is watching the African Cup match. Egypt v Ivory Coast. A win would qualify us for the semifinals. And who would we be up against there? Senegal, he says. Well it’s been a good run. Nice time in the empty mall. It’s easy with him. A generous laugher who likes to carry my groceries, what else could I ask for?

And then there were three. My brother tells us about his Faoyum trip from the backseat. H asks me to make an itinerary for us.

I pull up the notes app:

On Sunday morning, I make coffee. We jaywalk our way to our local sports club to see what the stitch is. There are so many old men who look like they’re on death’s door, and it fills me with a vigour for life. Their presence makes me want to live a long life so I can learn a city like the back of my hand and lean against a dingy old car, waiting for a stranger to ask me for directions.

#weeknotes