11. Egyptian, Modern
Once — that is, just weeks before that night in Brighton — there was a young modern-day man in Alexandria called Akram who wanted to pull my cultural references out of the 1930s, into the present. Akram was a law student in his early 20s. He had an i********: account.
In the 21st century, Akram was youthful, like my grandfather Wassim had been in the 20th. Nearly a century apart, both were in their times, of the same class of young men known in Alexandria as the شباب - shabab - the dudes. I was never one of the shabab and never would be. I have come to respect — despite myself — that there are understandings Akram and Wassim will share that I will never fathom. That is not only a function of my gayness or my femininity or my never having seen Alexandria but from just
