![]() ![]() My father describes my birth as ‘no problems’. Green and a big nose – very unattractive. She makes a hook shape with her finger, in case words don’t do justice to the severity. ‘It was like a hook,’ Nana tells me, reminiscing about the birth of her first grandchild. His son, of course, was the one with the big nose. When my grandparents came to see him, the nurse brought the wrong baby. ![]() By that time, Mama was screaming and Mohamed was crowning. I don’t know what to do.’ He left the room to pray and came back smelling like cigarettes. ‘It’s too much,’ the delivering doctor said in Arabic, throwing his hands in the air. They named him Mohamed like every other baby boy born in Alexandria, Egypt, on that day. ![]() My father was happy his first child was a boy. Stuck sideways inside my mother, he didn’t want to come out. Mohamed was difficult from the beginning. When our grass isn’t as green as we want, we concrete over it. We aren’t brought up that way we don’t nurture what isn’t healthy. I was never in the habit of maintaining good oral health. In my mouth now, one would struggle to find a tooth not stuffed with a filling. By that time, I had two gold crowns and twice as many holes in my teeth. My parents gave me the nickname when I was four. In Arabic, a soos, a cavity, is what you get after eating too much sugar. Mohamed threw tantrums Soos stayed quiet if you gave her something sweet. Mama learned early on that her daughter was different from her son. ![]()
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