Beginnings and Endings
If grief was a city, it would be Cairo.
I walk through the city I call home; she feels like a stranger to me and I am a stranger to her. Its changing landscapes and neighborhoods, the endless brutal construction and destruction.
My Cairo no longer exists, and with its loss, I have been stripped of my sense of belonging and safety.
Her streets are like fragments of memories of a lost love or a loved one who died but their presence still lingers in every part of the city. Forced to shed the skin of the past, it has now become a place of departure.
Through this journey which felt like a farewell, and at times an embrace, I experienced an unexpected but profound shift in my relationship with my father – something that was once fractured. My father, who taught me about Cairo, who I share nearly all of my childhood memories with. Rebuilding a bridge that was once thought to be lost.
Endings and beginnings collide in a storm of grief, rage, and love; that rage is born from that very love and this love has nowhere to go now. It lingers in the air – impossible to ignore and refuses to fade no matter how much we wish it would.
The Project is supported by Magnum Foundation and AFAC Arab fund for Arts and Culture.
