Thread by @monaeltahawy

I wrote this in Dec. 2020. It had been a year since I'd seen my parents and siblings and I was wondering how it would feel to reunite. A week ago, I showed up unannounced at my parents' doorstep to reunite our hearts. I am grateful. feministgiant.com/p/essay-exiled…

5 days after I arrived, my mum said she woke up with a song by Abdel-Halim Hafez on her mind. He is the singer around whom I wrote the essay, which examines being in "ghorba": exile, estrangement. So I put his songs on a speaker, replicating our weekends of nostalgia in London.

A week after I arrived, my dad's oldest brother died in Cairo.

Grieving is compounded by distance.

My parents have not been able to visit Egypt and see their siblings since the pandemic began. Like so many around the world, hearts in exile and longing. feministgiant.com/p/essay-exiled…

This is the Halim song around which I wrote my essay.

In keeping with the theme of exile and estrangement, the song is called Sawwah. A word in Arabic needs several in English to convey its full meaning. One of the meaning of Sawwah is the wanderer

Music plays a major role in a lot of my writing these days.

I wrote this one to explain how Vivaldi--who I never used to listen to in the Before Time--has helped me learn a new language to cope with the pandemic. feministgiant.com/p/essay-some-o…

There are many Vivaldi compositions I can now reference.

This one brings me much joy and comfort

We have not reckoned with the magnitude of our pain and grief.

We are not standing on level grieving fields as governments and corporations and CEOs rush us out to “normal.”

feministgiant.com/p/essay-some-o…

Those of us who did not die must prepare to take our individual grief out into the world, find our place in communal mourning and nurturing and whisper to each other’s hearts “We know you’re strong. Look at what you survived. You can be soft here, we’ve got you.”