I grew up obsessed with the Disney movies and Hollywood rom-coms of the early 2000s. There was nothing more exciting than tagging along to my parents’ weekly cinema date or turning on the TV after finishing my homework and finding a Jennifer Aniston film playing, even if it was already halfway through.
Little by little, this created a fixation with romance, which became the main thing I sought out in my life, no matter how much it was filled with other things. In middle school, I would get SO excited showing up to school the day after a family wedding because it meant that I could flip my flawlessly straightened hair (versus my usual curly hair that I used to see as SO not movie material at the time) and make all the boys in class instantly fall in love with me. Although those early years were COMPLETELY unsuccessful in romantic love, my obsession prevailed… However, when I went to university, for some reason, things finally seemed to be changing. I felt seen for the first time and all of a sudden needed to experience all of my romantic fantasies at once.
I would kiss and tell every weekend. Whether it was a drunken kiss underneath the rain in the French town I first studied in, a spicy makeout sesh in a chalet in Sahel over the summer, or even a delicate morning breakfast, pain au chocolat in hand, as a French boy who looks an awful lot like Timothee Chamalet (don’t they all?) sang The Beatles to me in his mother’s bohemian Parisian flat (on the weekend she was away, of course).
Finally, I was living the life these rom-coms once promised me. And then…I (accidentally) moved back home to Egypt. I won’t delve into the reasons for that, but what I will tell you is that after more than a decade of living “my best life” abroad, I ended up back home, a place where love and dating mean something completely different to what I got accustomed to. The first few weeks, I loved the fact that the sun was shining every day. But what I loved less was the fact that all of a sudden, my every action had to be calculated if I didn’t want to be questioned about where I was going and with whom I was with every time I left the house. I felt it most when I had a crush on a boy for the first time.
He and I actually met in Cairo on a brief trip there before I eventually settled. We spent a few evenings going out in groups, creating a little bubble of intimacy on one side of the table, getting to know each other as best we could in a public context. And then, on my last night, he decided to drive me back home, even though he lives on the complete opposite side of town (anyone who knows Cairo at all will know how big of a commitment that is!) By the time we got to my grandma’s home, we didn’t want to stop chatting. So we continued driving around, eventually stopping in front of an empty house because I told him that what we were doing was bad for the environment— which gained me an eye roll.
When we stopped the car, we sat in silence, feeling the weight of the tension between us. I was frustrated as there was no tomorrow, wondering why does it have to be like this? Eventually, we heard the fajr adhan and I, against every fiber of my body, told him that he should probably take me home. So he started the car, and we drove back. When we arrived, I said bye to him, and told him that I’d be back soon. We awkwardly hugged, but I stalled getting out of the car. “Can I kiss you?” he asked. I giggled. “We’re in front of my grandma’s house!” I knew she’d be up anytime. With that in mind, I made my way back to my gate, pondering over what could’ve happened if I had said yes. To my luck, my key wasn’t working and my mom was awake, meaning that she had to come down and open the door for me. Of course, I got questioned about why I was out until sunrise and who I was out with. I fumbled my way through an explanation, and when I checked my phone, like in the old rom-coms I used to watch, a notification appeared with a sweet message from home. I quickly messaged back saying how it all made me feel like I was 13 again. Over the following weeks, we continued speaking on the phone (a lot), until I eventually started feeling strongly about him. I was in complete and utter shock: how could I possibly know that I was falling for someone if we hadn’t even kissed properly yet?
Eventually, I ended up fully moving back to Cairo and falling for a few other people. But that question never really went away. With all the restrictions and surveillance—from my grandma’s pointed questions to the bawabs mentally recording every single person entering and leaving every building in the city, to the fact that unmarried couples can’t rent a hotel room—kissing and telling every weekend, the way I had gotten used to, became virtually impossible. In the meantime, the number of crushes I had was not decreasing, while the number of people that I was starting to fall for without having ever kissed, started increasing. The first few times, that frustration was still there. My life was looking less and less like Rumor Has It and a lot more like Harim Karim. Wine dates were replaced with coffee dates, where we’d sit on opposite sides of the table to avoid disapproving looks from an auntie, and they would end with the 12:30 A.M. screening at the nearby cinema. We’d pick whatever film was playing—just for the chance to hold hands for a little moment.
Today, after about two years of this, I’ve realized that these exact situations are a lot more romantic than those drunken kisses. Why? Well, for two reasons. The first is that when you can’t consume love whenever and wherever you want, there’s something else you’re forced to do: talk.
I’ve never actually been forced to spend so much time talking to someone before kissing them. This means that by the time you manage to go on a camping trip with that person (obviously, still woven into a bigger group so that you don’t raise suspicions) and get intimate, you actually know who they are — you know what their favorite breakfast is and the games they played with their cousins as kids. You’ve already gauged whether this is a person you’re genuinely into, or whether it was just the idea of them that enticed you.
The second reason is intention. It takes a lot of effort and planning to get some privacy and that makes you think about your decisions a lot more because if you’re going to take all of the risks involved, then it has to be worth it. For someone who used to be so impulsive, this (forced) layer of thinking has done me a lot of good. How? Well… see… the French boy who sang that Beatles song to me on that sunny Parisian morning never actually texted me back. And though I tried to play it cool, it obviously broke my heart. Now, by the time I get intimate with someone, I trust them enough to know that they’re not going to break my heart (not immediately, at least).
Am I glad that all these restrictions and obstacles for lovers in Cairo exist? Not at all—there’s nothing sweeter than someone pulling you close while you’re walking hand-in-hand and surprising you with a little make-out session. But, it has definitely taught me that romance exists in the slowness of getting to know someone over time—in the back rows of the movie theater, in the stolen moments of leaning closer in the front seat of an Uber—far more than I ever imagined. And when that long-awaited drunken kiss finally happens, it tastes so much sweeter. Moving to Cairo has made me more patient in love, and for that, I find myself resenting the bawabs just a little less.
