“There is enough cruelty in the world,” she told me softly, “to justify all the music ever made.”

We played at being American women—smoking, drinking, kissing—unconstrained by sarees and rules.

We'll wear your fog like the veils we never had. We don't like the sun anyways.

This abysmal government’s policies were personal now.

She looked pleased, like alcohol had given her yet another gift. And vicious—alcoholics are so vicious. They'll drink your breath, and I knew it.

For some women, taking the higab—that permanent oath, that fabric tattoo—can be seen as a form of sacrifice but, for my sister Soraya, one of the most fashionable women of Cairo, if not Egypt, even the world, this would be the ultimate sacrifice.