A Tourist in My Own Country
Celine Sawiris
“Yalla, yalla we’re leaving!” yelled her mom, storming into her room. She was standing at the tip of the balcony and in front of her, she saw her whole life. She saw buildings slowly tumbling down, she saw the innocent turn guilty, and she saw her family torn apart like never before. All her life she imagined what it will be like growing old in this very same spot… but before she knew it, it was all just a dream, rudely interrupted by sirens. She heard the voice of the Muezzin and recognized that it was time for their prayer. But something seemed off this time. Every day she had been woken by the same sounds. She’d had the same routine. And she never expected anything less; until suddenly, prayers turned into warnings: “Live from Tahrir Square, the biggest Revolution in the Arab Spring since 1952.”, she heard the TV shout from next door. With no explanation, separated from her family, the next thing she knew she was in a car full of strangers, supposedly there to protect her. Each going into different cars, as it was too risky to all be in the same one. The naive little eleven-year-old girl with wet cheeks looked outside her window and all she could see were hopeless faces standing in the midst of destruction. Leaving family and friends behind with no warning and no time to say goodbye, she waved naively at the streets.
That was five years ago. And at the time, she would have never imagined that she would be put in such a helpless position. She wanted so badly to be part of the change, to help her country, and to prove to the people of her worth. But she couldn’t. “People stare and wait, wait for us to mess up, as if their happiness depends on it. Today is that day,” her mother told her on the plane ride to the unknown. Her family fled, and along with them she went. She knew she wasn’t coming back. She never understood what it meant to be privileged until she was forced out of her own country. She became a tourist in the city she called home. Next thing she knew, she was in a new country, new city, and new school. And the same little naive girl now stood on her own, on a different balcony. Unfamiliar.
That little girl was me. People tell me to forget about the past because as we say in Arabic, “Elle fat mat” which means what passed is gone and you can’t change that. This new life always reminds me that my choices have already been made by others and in order to move on I needed to accept that. “تحیا مصر ”, “Long live Egypt”, they said, not knowing that it had died long before it was able to live.