His 50ieth and where it all began | True Blue #1

19/02/2023

I am starting to work on this on his 50iest birthday.

He is sitting on the couch across the room from me, reading an old dignified version of the Koran with a green cover and gold embroidery that is falling apart in his hands. For as long as I remember it’s been with him, with us. It’s always been on the table in the hallway in front of my room or in on the table in our living room.

As he always does, he is whispering aloud as he reads. I do not know what he is saying, I do not understand, I am not trying to right now but I wish that if I did I would know what he was saying. If I had to guess, it is some sort of prayer of thanks for his life so far and asking to protect the ones he loves for the rest of it and beyond his death.

He always murmurs really loudly when he reads the Koran. When I was younger, he would teach me to tell Souras by heart. That was our bed time ritual. I hated and loved it at the same time. I disliked that I didn’t understand it, only parts that he translated, and that some sounds felt so foreign on my tongue when I wished so badly to be able to speak it fluently. I hated the pressure I felt to get it right because he would be so proud when I did and try to hide his disappointment when I didn’t. I loved making him proud when I remembered a whole Soura correctly and was able to recite it, I loved the sound and the flow of them, the unique rhythms, especially as he said them and I loved having his whole undivided attention every night. When my younger sister was old enough, she joined our sessions and I liked helping him teach her sitting in the dark of our room with a candle lit, both of us in our pajamas leaning against him. What I loved the most though, was when he diverged and started telling us stories about his childhood.

That is what this is. I am writing down his stories like I have wanted to for a long time. He doesn’t know yet, but it felt right. He is fifty today and his hair is only black because he dyed it in Egypt last week and he jokes about how he doesn’t want to get too old, but it’s not a joke to me. His dad, my grandfather, died before I was born when he was 65. That’s only 15 more years. And though those are more years than I have memory of, I am more acutely aware of time passing now than I have ever been.

When I tell him about this idea, he’ll likely joke about how it was actually his idea. Still now, but more often when I was younger, he would always say ‘You should go get a notebook and write that down’ whenever he felt like he said something smart, like he had shared some worldly wisdom with me. I have a very clear picture in my mind of how he would laugh with me when I rolled my eyes or shook my head because I just knew that he was going to say that before he even opened his mouth. I see the gesture he always does when he says it too, pretending to write in the air and the smile, the little sparkle in his eyes.

Actually, speaking of his smile, this smile is a real one. It’s a full on cheeky smile that translates to his whole being. He always holds his stomach and leans back when he laughs really hard. I am always mesmerized by how real and joyful it is when he laughs, truly laughs. My siblings and I used to make fun of his photo smile. He has this weird thing were he doesn’t really laugh in photos. Especially during family holidays he would always take selfies of all of us and he would always do this half smile thing that doesn’t even look like a smile. He’d pull up one side of his mouth, kind of distort his face and it does not look like a smile at all because the whole rest of his body is not participating. It’s such a fake smile, I can see from miles away that it’s fake. It’s so easy to distinguish between a genuine smile and a fake one when it comes to him. I love when he smiles. We went through phases where I hardly ever saw it. He isn’t someone to put a smile on his face or fake a laugh if he doesn’t mean it. And so if he laughs, I appreciate it all the more because I know he genuinely thought it was funny. My favorite thing might be when he laughs about himself, when he tells a joke and thinks he is just the funniest and makes himself laugh.

As I think about why I started writing all of this down in English and not German, and how I wish I could write this in Arabic, he finishes reading, gently closes the Koran and sets it aside. He is putting on his socks now, that he hadn’t put on before because he was praying. Then he gets up to look out the window as he calls his mother on Google Meet because for some reason WhatsApp calls don’t seem to connect to Egypt.

He said today at breakfast that he was born on a Monday. When Mom asked how he knew that, he jokingly said ‘I was there’. In actuality, we are not sure his birthday is the 19th of February exactly. We only know that it was around February in 1973.

He is fifty today. Or not today, like I said. No matter.

He is thirty years older than me. Always has been, always will be.