I used to love someone.
We worked together.
I really admired his personality.
He asked for my hand in marriage,
But my parents rejected him,
Because he was from a different social class.
I had a feeling he was ambitious,
And that he’d amount to something.
When we were engaged,
He was always concerned with the apartment,
And getting it ready.

She stood, pretty as a picture,
In the midst of a place that despised beauty.
The eyes of the passengers, once cold and dead, were now filled with anger and jealousy.
Filled with unspoken words I’ve heard before.

I’m your mother and I have your best interests at heart.
I’m telling you it’s not going to work out.
Building your lives together is not something that’ll work.

“I want to tell you something,
I’m just not sure how to say it,” he said.
He paused and then said,“Noha, you have AIDS.”
“And you?”
He said he didn’t have it.
“Fine,” I said, “What am I going to do.”

“When do you plan on getting married?” my father, aunts, uncles, and cousins always ask me.
Or if we’re at a wedding, they always say ou’balik [may you be next].
I wonder how the elders of the family would react if I walked around at funerals and poked them, saying “Ou’balik!”

I got married after 6 years of being in love.
During that time,
I found out he was cheating on me with the live-in maid,
Who took care of his mother.
I confronted him at first,
but he denied it.

I work in the field of life coaching and training.
I’m not from Cairo.
I’m from Upper Egypt,
From Minya specifically.
I came here alone.
Meaning I left behind my family—
And I come from a big family—
And my job, life, and friends.
And I’m a sociable person,
And I like maintaining close relationships with people.
So, my family and friends mean the world to me.

My mother says that a girl’s degree and her career are more important than marriage.
They are her weapons.
That way, if she gets married and any trouble arises between her and her husband,
She’ll still have her career.
marriage, social pressure, engagement