I'd go to the airport an hour before the arrival time of your plane even though I know it'll arrive an hour late.
I'd go an hour early because I want us to share your first experience of Egyptian timing.
Egypt is not bound to the pace in which Earth loops her way around the sun like the lake swan, because Egypt has always preferred belly dances to ballet and it shows well in weddings.

I'd take you to your first Egyptian street wedding.. Show you how we set it up using khayameya, the same khayameya we use for funerals.

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you to the poorest neighborhood in Cairo, and let you see how rich it is.
dirt in abundance
azans in abundance
smiles in abundance
and colloquial namecalling in abundance.

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you to khan El Khalili, where you'd get lost between the smell of kebab and the scent of musk.
I'd take you to each silver shop there and count with you Hamsas as if we're counting stars and looking for the little prince.
I'd hold your hand each time we see a Hamsa.
I'd grab you by the hand and take you to the palm reader in the old ahwa that smells of antiquity yet serves fresh minted tea.
I'd  grab you by the hand because that's where your heart line is.
I'd take you to the Nile afterwards because that's where my heart line is.

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you at evening on a Feluka louder in sound and light than one of your nightclubs, and let you see how it shatters the night as if it’s made of glass.
I'd take you at morning on a Feluka where the glass towers are, and let you see how arrogantly they stand on the river bank.
I'd love you until noon on a Feluka where our view would be the clean cold glass towers' reflection on the ***** warm Nile.
I'd name that Feluka "clean sheets are not the warmest"

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you on a journey on the 6th of October bridge, and let you see how the cars walk hand in hand like lovers, but keep on honking, breaking, leaking, like it's the end of their relationship.
I'd take you to downtown where street vendors are screaming their lungs out so loud that, due to the physical laws of the universe, their vigorous voices are no longer heard

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you to the wall protecting the Israeli embassy, but I won't get you too close so that you won't smell the scent of accumulated
****, **** that smells of pollution, salt, and sorrow.
I'd take you to the wall protecting the Israeli embassy but I won't let you stand too far away.
I'd take you the wall protecting the Israeli embassy and I'd take a step forwards with you, just one step so that we'd be close enough to see the rumble, and then I'll show you no more.
I'd take you to the wall protecting the Israeli embassy and let the rumble show you Egypt...
let the rumble show you the revolution...
let the rumble show you the sting of
عيش
حرية
عدالة اجتماعية
كرامة انسانية
carved as graffiti to be rewritten no matter how many times the government washes it away.

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you to the pyramids at night.
I'd buy us lemonade and tell you why I prefer using stones to metaphors.

I'll take you to my home and show you why this city is so worthy of love..
Why this city is so grey..
so loud..
so cruel..
and so beautiful.

IN THE PEW YOU FEEL GODS EYES BURNING HOLES IN YOUR SKULL ALL HEADS BENT! ALL HEADS BENT! THE CHOIR HUMS THE FREQUENCY TO UNDO THE ATOMIC BONDS OF YOUR LOATHSOME FORM
[GOD IS WATCHING] [GOD IS WATCHING] an endless love, eternal, unconditional, unforgiving, [GOD IS WATCHING] all his children, all his loathsome children, /you know god loves you, right? even when you look away, right? even in the dark?/ [GOD IS WATCHING] YOUR LOATHSOME CORNERS, THE GRIME IN THE CRACKS OF YOUR FLOOR, THERE ARE NO SECRETS IN THE HOUSE OF GOD NO SECRETS IN THE PEERING GAZE OF GOD: god sees. god sees. if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, a good, god-fearing girl, a god-fearing girl, a god-eating girl, subsuming god, DO YOU WISH TO BECOME GOD, /we
know
how good you are. we know you could be pure/ I CAN PROVE:
THAT GOD LOVED YOU:
IF GOD MADE YOU THIS WAY
OR DID YOU MANGLE YOURSELF:

did you let the devil in?

Why is it I always find myself laying in the wet grass staring up at constellations with a set of chromosomes lighting up a cigarette that don’t belong to you?
This time the LSD flowed through the veins of a boy with blonde flowing hair. I laid next to him and tried to keep up with and envision what he saw and felt that night, and I think he could tell that I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant when he tried to describe it and he sighed with the faintest hint of frustration, but I reassured him with a simple
“talk about it.”
And he began to.
to use his hands, silhouettes against the dark violet sky, twirling and dancing, the stars twinkling and shining light between the shadowed fingers like the sun through trees. he described looking up at a circle of white light of life, and from it stemmed four hallways or paths, and then how there was a giant hand in the sky plucking at the stars, and then how the stars “danced, almost seductively, (no, seductively isn’t the right word, but it’s the easiest way to explain it)” for his eyes only. And how he was melting into the grass on our backs and the way Something by the Beatles made him feel something, and he asked about my writing and understood my anxiety and traced his tattoos in the dark, painting pictures of the ones I’d never noticed, the sparrow, the compass, the hamsa, with his words.
I felt as if I were tripping too, like the tiny tab dissolved into my own tongue for forty five minutes until it made it’s way down the back of my throat with a sip of water. Like I could feel myself melting into psychedelia with each syllable that rolled smoothly off of his tongue. Like the giant hand in the sky was mine, and I plucked the little lights like the strings of a guitar, like they burned my fingertips the way the flames from lighters did when I tested how slowly I could wave them over my fingers before I felt the heat when I was a child. Like the earth grew into me, like vines slithered their way up my spine and my vertebrae blossomed into lotus flowers, like Something by the Beatles made me feel something.
The earth was raw; it was so real.
Yet reality had never felt farther in a sober state.
I felt touched and untouchable, invincible and invisible, desired and deserted.
We finally stood and walked away from our little bed of leaves but they didn’t want me to leave- they tangled themselves in my hair and he told me to leave them in because it looked lovely.
So I did.
And I found you, where I always do.
You were laughing your acid off in the fluorescent lights of your bedroom.
And your eyes were green and your cheeks pink and your palms open and your mind
untouched by the untouched beauty we experienced and the enlightening clarity and the knowledge we sought under the all-knowing night sky.