Cairo seemed as complex, unpredictable, familiar, and as real as where she had just come from, but in a way, she could not easily decipher. The frustration of sensing that the unfamiliar was nothing but a well-known story written with a different alphabet, halftones, and an incomprehensible grammar, made her feel stupid.
Chapter 4. Caught. In this chapter of Like Two Rivers, Katarina arrives for the first time in Cairo to take care of a unexpected inheritance from the mother she never knew.
Cairo, 2003, August. To step into Cairo was an abrupt and potent confrontation with the acuteness of her own ignorance. It was like walking down familiar steps in the dark and to your astonishment, finding that there was one more step than anticipated. The sudden short drop and the snap, when you slam into reality, shoots like a cold instinctual fear up through your bones. Nobody warned her that the world was far less simple than what she had been told. To her Cairo was as complex, unpredictable, familiar, and as real as where she had just come from, but in a way she could not easily decipher.
Continue reading“Samira, she said again, this time audibly but with a low voice, as she smiled faintly at herself in the mirror. Katarina had picked the name from a shop that sold crystal vases. Samira. It had been a spontaneous whim which in an instant had become her new truth. A truth whose shielding falsehood Sherif might now be able to threaten. She detached her eyes from her face in the mirror and looked down into her coffee cup, the untouched milk foam reached slightly above the rim. The reflection of her camera next to the cup was a proof that she was now a photographer.” Chapter 4, Caught
