I wake up to the sound of a street vendor selling tomatoes “hamra ya tamatemm” (red tomatoes). The sound vibrates through our glass windows and during my first days in Cairo, truly startles me as I’m used to the piercing silence of snow-filled Kazakhstan. As I look out of the window, the street vendors’ voice is drowned by cars, kids screaming and vendors of almost every other product imaginable, including gas cylinders. The colours blur into each other and hide the dusty backdrop of the Egyptian streets. Black and white taxi cabs look like bees angrily buzzing around the streets, and frequently on the sidewalks. Water splashes from a bucket in front of the door of a new store that opened across our flat – a call to good fortune.

Because the environment I was raised in was so different than my homeland, my distance from Cairo has allowed me to focus with attention on the small details of the banal day-to-day life. When I come back ‘home’, I feel my senses grow stronger as it try to take in as many of the stimuli I’m presented with so I can savour them and fondly reflect upon them when I’m later very far away. When I talk to my relatives, they complain about the noise and crowds of Cairo, yet I fail to see the source of their frustration, as when I look outside my window I might as well be watching a carefully conducted symphony. Small things I see outside of my window might be irritating or even invisible to those who have been living in Cairo for a long time, yet to me they are a divinely colourful representation of my homeland.

The environment that I was raised away from has affected me as much as the environment I was raised in. While I have moved around a lot and have thus become a product of many different cultures, languages and peoples, I feel a strong attachment to my homeland. This attachment comes from a lack of familiarity and a thirst for discovery. Because I am not used to being in Egypt, when I am in Egypt, it means so much more. I do not have the chance to take it for granted, and this has allowed me to always take a part of the Egyptian culture wherever I go. Whether it is Ramadan, or Arabic books and songs, I think about Egypt with care because its absence from my life has made it even more dear to my heart.

■ Farida Elhabashy

Grinnell University

Iowa