Sunbird

Week 6, 2026: Chaos!

It's time to go back.

H had the day off on Monday. He picked me up after the gym so we could buy belated birthday gifts for Medo. I got a silver chain that was way over my budget, and H bought a fanny pack and grey gym shorts. We split a cigarette on the way home. Medo likes his gifts, I think. I hope? Yeah let’s hope.

When I told him it was over my budget, it made him happy and he said he'll buy me dinner as a treat. I wanted to remember the taste of fried brains, so we ordered fried brains and Alexandrian liver and sausages stuffed with some animal's intestines. It turns out fried brains taste like tofu. When in Le Caire.

At the start of my trip, I outlined my itinerary:

I’m happy with this. Happy I got to do so much beyond this list. Happy there were things I missed out on too. It’s good to look forward to things.

One of the things I’m going to miss out on is Omar Khairat at the Cairo Opera House. How magical would that have been! The composer is playing a Valentine’s Day concert because he knows what the ladies want. I got the dates mixed up initially and got so terribly excited. Then, when we found out the concert was taking place after my flight, H was like I guess you’re not meant to see him in your homeland. Haha, here come the waterfalls.

On my last night in Cairo, we did Chili’s and stand-up. The Egyptian version. That’s when you drink a Turkish coffee at Chili’s and chain-smoke cigarettes while watching newbie comics try out material. There were four of them and the lone female comic didn’t land a single joke. I get so embarrassed when the lone female comic does badly. I wish I didn’t take it so personally because that’s what it takes to get good. She didn't seem to mind as much as I did.

That's why I don't drive. The world doesn't need another example of Bad Woman Driver. I don't need to drive badly enough to justify ruining the reputation of women drivers a tiny bit more. I'm being kind, really.

Only in repacking my suitcase on Wednesday morning did I start to cast doubt on my packing choices. Did I really need twenty pairs of pyjamas? Three different pairs of jeans? Six books, a deck of cards and Bananagrams? I mean, there's Internet here. Silly, silly girl. My aunt entrusted me to bring back ten boxes of mashed beans for her brother but I only managed to squeeze in six. If they soil the books, it’s a sign I’m not meant to read them.

The airport was a mess. Nobody seems to have witnessed a queue before today. A Dutch lady was so overwhelmed she turned to me and said “Chaos!” and nothing else. Facts. Couldn’t have said it better. You can trust the Dutch to be pithy. When the endless security checks came to an end, I got a pizza and a latte at illy and felt so peaceful I nearly started meditating. It’s not a Friday night-out that makes me crave a tipple. It’s this, here, alone and unencumbered at an airport on a Wednesday morning. A good reminder of why I abstain. The Syrian guy next to me paused the Turkish soap opera he was watching on his phone without any earphones to quiz me about my life story. And just like that, I was no longer free of encumbrance.

Aisle seat, as always, on solo flights. The guy in the middle seat booked the window but an old lady stole it, so he had to take hers. Evil old woman. And then a girl with perfect hair reclined her seat so far back his knees had no room to breathe. Poor guy. Near the end of the flight, I went to put my book in my tote bag and he asked if he could look at it. I handed it over, then, wanting to make small talk, patronizingly asked if he had heard of one of the most well-known contemporary Egyptian authors of our time. This guy just can't catch a break. As he glossed over the back cover, he earnestly answered that he knew him but hadn’t heard of this particular novel. Maybe God put you next to me so you could find out about it.

Now I'm home, back in the Gulf. My temporary home. I hope I move to [REDACTED] soon. I just need one (1) job offer, just one. That’s all I need. For now, I can unpack my suitcase with the six boxes of mashed beans and millions of pyjamas, and properly detangle my hair for the first time in a month. My massive travel hangover means that the rest of my week goes to fixing my diet and sleep. My face is all puffy from only eating carbs and stuff like fried brains. I'm hoping I can sleep it off.

I spent the whole of Thursday reading this gross diarist-style blog I found on Substack. The kind where you can't tell if writer is purposely trying to shock you or if they started from a place of honesty and can now only create from a place of discomfort or if they're going through something and this is all a cry for help. I couldn't stop reading it, even though, and maybe because, it made me feel a little ill.

It got under my skin because it pressed on this sticky feeling that I’m being lied to all the time. Probably from years of believing people's words over their actions, trusting that they know themselves more deeply than I understand their behavior, and that they wouldn't lie to me because I wouldn't lie to them. Having tasted the fruits of that lesson, I can feel the overcorrection ripple through. The fear that I'm being fooled seems related to my fascination with confessional writing. The compromise of pride and integrity for a good story makes it okay somehow. Even if I'm being fooled, you're the biggest fool of all.

So I’m trying to believe people without being a naivete. Start off with the assumption that people often mean well but take compliments, advice and feedback with a grain of salt. I received an email that was extremely nice and I believed every word, drafting and re-drafting a response in my Notes app. I believed JK when she said that she doesn’t want to lose me again. And I believed Alex when he said that he would pick up a 3am call from me to help me hide a body. We were on the phone when the call to prayer started at a mosque not too far behind me. He paused, listening, and said ‘Is that reverb? You were asking what DJs do, there you go’.

On the weekend, I got my eyebrows done and my nails painted bright red. It helps to look good before you feel it. Like walking on the beach with a large iced latte, your bones drinking in the salty water and the caffeine and the will to wake up on the right side of the bed.

I went to an Arabic calligraphy workshop on Sunday. We traced the alphabet while a Ukrainian girl told me about her journey learning Arabic. I told her that if I didn’t grow up speaking Arabic, I probably wouldn’t have ever picked it up but I don’t know if that’s true. She has an Egyptian boyfriend and doesn't plan on leaving the Gulf. I'd learn a language for a partner or a country.

Do you know about snowbird culture? I know about sunbird culture. In my season of migration to the north, I learned that I felt more like myself in the cooler part of the world. And now I’m back in the south but I know this isn’t home, even though I called it home for a long time. This was a season too. I would learn a language for the land because that’s part of sunbird culture. In making a new home, you need to give it new words.

#weeknotes