To nurture a nature

You said you’re Egyptian, right? Yes! Well… Egyptian and Palestinian. This is so embarrassing to admit but I had a whole Ancient Egypt phase as a child. You did? Yeah. I was, like, obsessed. I begged my parents to take me to Cairo. That’s just adorable. It was all I thought about. I wanted to be an Egyptologist. You know what’s funny? That never even occurred to me as an option. Really? Yes. I remember being unimpressed with the pyramids as a child and wondering about when we would be home and I’d get to eat a mango gelato. That’s funny to imagine. You as a child, bored with one of the wonders of the world. I loved it when I went back as an adult but it was hard to be patriotic when I was younger. People would hear me talk and call me a khawaga. That’s kind of like being called a gringa. Imagine that: Me, a gringa! How mean! It hurt to hear but I get it now. They were just trying to make sense of me. Do they still call you a gringa? I went to get my ID renewed recently and a man asked…