Newspaper Shreds

Seven thousand miles is the distance between Cairo, Egypt and the U.S. east coast, and I have been exposed to the worst kind of abuse on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. "Newspaper Shreds," spread on my late mother's bed, on her "honeymoon" signaled to my late father that my mother's pregnancy with me was a result of adultery. Being convinced of a child's illegitimacy by a non-Arab husband wouldn't be such a "great deal," but to an Egyptian (particularly Christian) husband, the consequences are no less than a disaster, a lifetime disaster to both the wife and the child. On the late morning of August 17, 2008, I determined for myself that I have always been my father's legitimate son. My story may be an indictment of the culture in which I was born and raised, and of my own father's treatment of my mother and myself. However, it is important to me, just like anything in my life, that I tell the Truth: "I have loved my father a whole lot more than I cared for life itself. My story spans more than six decades of witnessing the terrible treatment of women both in Egypt as well as the United States. The novel also displays the disastrous effects that those attitudes and that treatment have wrought on the children born to those societies. This is not a social commentary, but a personal story that really impacted me and "almost" my beliefs. It has black-colored the way I see the world. At one point in my life, due to a serious illness, I wrongly thought that I would never be able to father children. The night I thought that there was "no hope," I was sitting with an elderly lady, that same night, who lived next door to me in Cincinnati. As the lady realized that she had no more phrases to comfort me, she left me with one sentences. "So what, rats multiply too, but they live and die as rats," she said.