Nermeen Hegazi: When and how did we meet, ya Nour?
Nour Kamel: I believe it was at a mutual friend’s house, I don’t remember the context though, but I think it was around 2018?
Nermeen: Yeah, it was 2018.
Nour: The next time I think I saw you was when I bought flaxseed gel from you! And then I think we had the writing circle.
Nermeen: Oh, my goodness, yes. It’s coming back to me. The writing circle… do we want to talk about that?
Nour: It’s something that happened and I really enjoyed it.
Nermeen: I learned a lot from it. It did sort of rekindle my love for writing. It was just nice to have a space where we could share writing that required a degree of vulnerability.
Nour: And I feel like with all our identities as well, in a way, we were all on the same page, so it felt like we could share.
Nermeen: I miss being part of a writing community, around people who can read my stuff without judgment. With writing, especially, I feel I have to silence a hundred different voices, as with anything even remotely related to art, as we talked about earlier, I feel like it needs to be packaged and branded in a specific way. In bite-size form that people can quickly digest and then toss aside.
Nour: That they can consume very quickly.
Nermeen: Exactly. It makes me always wonder if my writing is good enough, and this sort of distracts me from why I want to write to begin with, which is because I believe I have something to say and it’s a medium I identify with in more than one way. So, I miss the community aspect of writing. Even if we overly praised one another’s work sometimes, it was still nice, and I honestly learned a lot. But, in general, I do feel like my idea of community has changed considerably.
Nour: Oh yeah, definitely. It’s an evolving term for me. “Community” or what I thought I was looking for in 2018 is vastly different from the community I want now and that I have found.
Nermeen: How would you define it now?
Nour: People who care about me, take care of me, love me, check in on me, talk to me. I think that’s very important. I thought it was identity-based for a long time: we all fall under this category, so we need to be in community together, because we have this thing in common. But you can still be a shitty person.
Nermeen: Plot twist!
Nour: Right! People are people, doesn’t matter if they resonate with one part of your identity. I kind of knew this deep down already, but I think, in particular, wanting a writing community and wanting a queer community made me feel very untethered. Once I found that in Egypt, I felt like it wasn’t something out of the realm of possibility. Now I know that there’s a larger community, I can be like where’s my community? Where are the humans that make me feel whole in their presence?
That’s what I’ve kind of come to. I have individuals who form a larger community. Do we all exist in the same room at the same time? Not necessarily. I’ve never needed to have this vast network of people around me, but for the longest time that was what I thought community was. But if there’s one person who’d show up if I needed, and I’d do the same for them – that’s enough for me, that’s community. So, it’s gone from like a dictionary definition to “what is community in practice?” How do we actually perform community with each other, on an individual level.
Nermeen: I now consider community to be the people who have been there for me all along, who don’t need me to be a certain way in order to show up for me. When you’re part of a larger community, you sort of gloss over the things that don’t really fit and try to trim and hide them so they’re not as visible.
Nour: It’s like, what am I doing?
Nermeen: Exactly. I do honestly miss the writing circle, but I just don’t miss all the drama.
Nour: I guess the drama was inevitable. I think with any group of people, whether they know each other or not, there’s always going to be tension and different dynamics going on. But I thrive on structure. I loved that we would meet up every week, someone would facilitate, etc.
Nermeen: It was surprisingly very consistent and taught me how to facilitate.
Nour: For sure, I went on and did a bunch of writing workshops with others and it translated over into that. I had workshop experience from university but that felt much more cutthroat, it was more about tearing into you and your writing. With the writing circle, it was intimacy and vulnerability and really wanting to build each other up. It was from a point of enjoyment. When it came to sharing our writing, I felt like we did that in a very mature and sensitive way.
Nermeen: Maybe a part of me felt a bit of grief when it ended, a feeling of loss, because it was something that worked very well. I remember one of my favourite questions we often asked was, “When we read your piece, how do you want us to engage with it?” It helped because I didn’t always want detailed feedback, just general thoughts.
And because it was mostly creative writing, it was almost always personal. Baring your soul through writing and then having people critique it would have felt weird. In a traditional workshop space, I feel like part of the fear, worry, and anxiety stem from that, from sharing something personal you can’t easily remove yourself from. Something you’re probably directly inspired by, stuff you’ve been through.
Nour: In those spaces you’re demanded to remove yourself and just be “the writer.”
Nermeen: Exactly, and I’ve never related to the school of thought that the text is separate from the author. Do you feel like, I don’t know if you want to bring up the pandemic. How did it affect your relationship with writing? Because there was this craze at the beginning where everyone was like, “We need to be productive!” and “You can finish your first novel during lockdown,” while I was just trying to survive each day.
Nour: It’s wild because I published a lot during that time, during 2020. I was writing but I don’t remember any of it. It was more like journaling and then looking back whenever I’d see an open call and be like, “I think I wrote something that would fit this.” There were dissociative moments during that year. But in 2021, I don’t remember writing a lot, I feel like things I published in 2021 were written previously. I wasn’t actively writing. It wasn’t until the beginning of 2022 that I even started reading again.
Nermeen: I’m still struggling. Books make me feel stuff, and sometimes I’m not looking for that. Same with writing. I process a lot through it. I think it’s interesting how growing up, I read a lot about famous writers and the kind of work they produced by channelling their anger, sadness, grief, and joy into masterpieces. I feel like there’s something about grief, or how I experience it, that robs me of my ability to express myself.
Nour: Grief is super, super debilitating and it’s super taboo too, honestly.
Nermeen: You’d think that wouldn’t be the case because it’s a universal human experience.
Nour: We are super critical of grief and grieving, policing the way people are or are not allowed to grieve, with a whole bunch of rules that are socially imposed.
Nermeen: And, like, do I even have the right to grieve?
Nour: Exactly, do I have the right to grieve for a certain thing?
Nermeen: Sometimes, I feel like the extent to which you are allowed to grieve depends on the degree of separation. Like there were deaths where I hadn’t spoken to the person for quite some time before they died, but I felt inconsolable. I feel with grief, especially, there’s no rhyme or reason.
Nour: Nope, it’s super personal. It affects everyone differently, and every death affects everyone differently.
Nermeen: Every loss in general.
Nour: Every loss, heartbreak, death – grief can be so many different things. We know it’s this weighty thing but we refuse to engage with it and that’s what’s so fascinating to me about grief. I feel like a lot of people who haven’t experienced grief, or think they haven’t experienced grief, are like, “I don’t understand this and it terrifies me that I will be where you are at some point.”
Nermeen: I feel like your thoughts, values, and ideas all become more layered as you grow up, more complex. Things stop being about “right” and “wrong.” You sort of progress beyond basic binary ideas and graduate to acknowledging that the world is a lot messier.
Nour: I only started thinking in grey after 25/26, like, the world is vast, even just identity-wise, and I’m still putting things together. So, the straight, hetero-passing me at 18 would have written God knows what. I didn’t even know most of who I was at that time. To write something and be like I understand this was a false representation of who I am and what I wanted for myself. I never felt I needed to publish – I needed to write. And it took me a very long time before, even in the back of my head, I admitted that it’s what I wanted to do. It wasn’t until I was like 21/22 that I thought I was a writer.
Nermeen: I still struggle with that. You really inspired me by the way you’d introduce yourself. You’d be like, “I’m a poet,” and I remember feeling how lovely it must be to know, to be sure about something about yourself. It’s also because I associated being a writer or an artist or whatever with output, what you produce. Like, can I be a writer if I don’t write consistently? But it’s something that I find joy in and something that helps me. It’s not even about joy – I feel like it’s a lot more complex with writing for me; it’s a way of finding myself.
Nour: I don’t necessarily feel joy when I’m writing but I feel this need to write, that in itself creates a sort of joy, but it’s not like oh this is something that brings me joy or is a joyful experience, it’s very much like an animal want.
Nermeen: Because it can be kind of draining and consuming. Usually, after I’ve written something, I’m like, “Oh, wow, okay khalas, I’ve been productive enough today.” It was only until very recently that I was asked to send in a bio that I finally removed the adjective “aspiring” before the label “writer.” I’m trying to redefine those labels for myself. Imposter syndrome obviously messes with my head because, in capitalist terms, I feel like I can’t be a writer unless I’ve produced a copious amount of work. So, yeah, maybe in that sense I’m not. But I consider myself to be one in the sense that it’s always been something meaningful to me, maybe more than joyful. Sometimes, there’s happiness attached to it, but we’ll say it’s a meaningful thing, something I feel with my whole body. There’s almost always this call to return to it, even if years later. So, I’m trying to find what works for me and not be obsessed with the output.
Nour: If anyone who writes shies away from calling themselves a writer, I’m like, “Why? Do you write? You write? You’re a writer, that’s it.”
Nermeen: The way you broke it down for me makes it a lot simpler, because sometimes, we tend to build things up in our head, and it feels like insurmountable goals that you’ll never be good enough to pull off.
Nour: We set the bar really high or we compare ourselves with others, when neither serves us or is how we should be approaching our own writing practice.
Nermeen: Exactly, I just use it as a neutral descriptor. This is just something I do.
Nour: I fell into this too, being hesitant to tell people or admit it because what makes you a writer, right? There are so many writers out there, who are you measuring yourself up against? And when you stop doing that, you realize you can just… exist. You can find people on your level who are putting themselves out there, making spaces, publishing things. It really helped to see other writers, like in 20.35 Africa, and what they’re writing about. Being encouraged by other writers rather than intimidated.
Nermeen: Do you think that hesitation stems from the fact that we both write in English? I feel that part of my hesitation for the longest time was that I used to be obsessed with the idea of fitting in. Growing up, I read a lot of books where whiteness was treated with neutrality, the norm. I even remember the characters in my stories as a kid all had names like Helen or whatever, and whenever I created a character sketch in my head, they were always white, always blue-eyed.
Nour: And that’s the lie of literary whiteness: that being white is the placeholder for everyone, the universal experience.
Nermeen: There was this kind of envy. There was also this frustration of feeling like there were a lot of white male writers who could just philosophize about life while going on a walk, talking about the human condition like it was just this abstract homogenous thing that we all experienced the same way, and I thought I needed to mould my thinking and the way I expressed myself similarly. The way I now approach language and writing, even if in English, is unlike the kind of English I grew up reading. I’ve stopped trying to speak to this invisible audience or introduce certain concepts or ideas like I’m addressing a white audience. I didn’t even realize I was doing that until very recently.
Nour: But that’s the literary canon, it’s very white and if you’re not white you need to explain all this stuff.
Nermeen: You need to italicize, add a glossary, etc.
Nour: Explain to the “average reader” – the average being white dudes. But, no, I don’t. I don’t have to explain to you, it’s not for you, it’s for me and people who will understand what I’m writing about because there are lots of us.
Nermeen: Because there’s also this assumption that if you’re writing in English, then you’re necessarily catering exclusively to a white audience, without taking into consideration that a lot of us know both Arabic and English.
Nour: A lot of us have been colonized and globalized so we speak the language. They are reaping what they sowed, to be honest.
Nermeen: Exactly, and I think this also used to be a hotly debated topic, whether or not you should use the “colonizer’s tongue.” But I think it’s very reductive to see it that way.
We are super critical of grief and grieving, policing the way people are or are not allowed to grieve, with a whole bunch of rules that are socially imposed. But no, it’s super personal. It affects everyone differently.
– Nour Kamel
Nour: Some of us don’t have access to anything but the colonizer’s tongue, so, are we less than? That’s a really shitty line of thought honestly. We can have these conversations, they’re important, but we’re talking about individual lives and lived experiences. These are things that can’t easily be turned into a hierarchy of who gets to say what, or even be measured at all. You can’t just be like, “Well, you’re using the colonizer’s tongue so your experience is less valid.” Like what? Sometimes that’s all we’ve had access to.
Nermeen: Which brings us to your poem “Other Ways of Saying.” When did you write this?
Nour: I think it was in a writing workshop with Winter Tangerine in 2017. They were really cool, and I think the poem came from a prompt on language that was based on a Safia Elhillo poem. It was published in 2020 in the anthology, so I sat on it for a while. I was just thinking a lot about language and language play and how it just exists in my head, and it came from the need to break down “where do these words come from, why do we say this?”
Nermeen: I also used to be obsessed with the etymology of certain words.
Nour: Yeah, like why? Sometimes you don’t have conclusive answers and it’s just like this is what I think it is, I think that’s where that piece comes from. You hear these words a lot and you’re like what does this mean? There’s just so many influences in Egyptian Arabic. I think it also feels overwhelmed by lineage sometimes, and having a say but not really having a say in some of the things we say?
Nermeen: That’s true, and having to fit what you’re feeling and thinking into those words, because I do feel words, at the end of the day, can be limiting in a way because you have concepts that are just amorphous.
Nour: Also depending on what language you’re trying to speak in. I might be able to describe this better in this language but I don’t necessarily have the same words or phrases. Like “inshallah,” which, depending on how you say it, has so many meanings. And in your poem the very word “tansheer” – we have words that are just so packed with imagery, moments, feelings, and places, that are close to our hearts and have a lot of meaning but to try and translate them is just, “dryer?” No.
Nermeen: Exactly, I feel like language, in general, is so laden with culture. Whenever I try to, for example, write a to-do list in English, I use the word “tansheer.” I just transliterate it, because “hanging the clothes out to dry” is not it.
Nour: And “doing the laundry” is also not accurate, that’s not what that is.
Nermeen: Exactly, because it’s not just like one task; it’s a whole process.
Nour: It’s a whole process, and doing the laundry almost makes it very reductive and it’s not that, it is a culturally significant part of living in Egypt.
Nermeen: I wrote “Tansheer” quite some time ago, maybe in 2013 or 2014. Like I said earlier, I was always trying to fit whatever I wanted to express into readily understandable, simple language. But it always felt like that never really encapsulated what I was trying to say. So, I tried to unpack something as mundane as tansheer, laundry, and the many ways it was significant to me. I said, “Okay, I’m going to stop trying to mould my life into something it’s not and embrace how it differs from the kind of books I read growing up.”
Nour: I just feel when in doubt, like tansheer vs trying to find a translation, when in doubt just write the whole thing. Just say it all. You don’t need to try, tire yourself out trying to find the term when you can just explain it.
Nermeen: I also feel like saying the whole thing is also, in some form or another, kind of anti-capitalist. We have a tiny bite-size word and label for everything. When you have to say the whole thing and explain the nuances, it becomes less digestible, less palatable, less package-able.
Nour: You’re asking someone to actually sit with the thing and think about it rather than here’s the word. Eat it. Move on.
Nermeen: And I feel what happens with this is that you’re always trying to fit yourself into the label as opposed to the original function of a label, which is to try and describe something you’re going through.
Nour: Or just one aspect of it.
Nermeen: Exactly, it keeps changing. Even when I embrace a label, I’m open to it changing. There’s also the idea that things don’t exist until you name them. We’ve all grown up with stuff we couldn’t name for the longest time. It’s not that those concepts didn’t exist before we could name them.
And honestly, if I’m being 100% transparent, the only language I’m probably fluent in is anxiety. People don’t take that into account when you speak any language, because speaking is a form of performance.
I spent a small chunk of my formative years abroad, but when we moved back here, I was a super shy child who didn’t have a lot to offer. The only thing that made me stand out was the fact that I spoke English fluently. So, I grew up with English being this prized possession and the only way I had to prove my “worth.” I knew it was a privilege, and that was what made messing up English 100 times worse than when it happened with Arabic. Because when you’ve lived abroad, people expect you to mess up. They see it as cute and endearing, which led to my devalue of Arabic. So, on getting to a place where I don’t give a fuck if I mess up in English, it’s taken the pressure of being eloquent or articulate off me. I try the best I can to get my point across. I remember my mom once bringing my attention to the fact that I’d always tack “get what I mean?” to the end of each of my statements, and I feel it was because there was this constant fear of always being misunderstood no matter what language I used. At this point, I feel most comfortable speaking a mix of both. Speaking either language purely on its own has always felt weird and unnatural to me.
Nour: I’m the opposite. It’s always fun to talk to people about language because in my head English and Arabic are two very separate things. It’s been a process of learning to put them together and this might be because I grew up in a household where my parents primarily spoke in one language. There was a very palpable divide. But I grew up with a lot of other kids in school who’d talk Arabizi very casually. It always made me think, “Your brains must be amazing!”
Nermeen: Honestly, broken. My brain is broken.
Nour: I mean, don’t say broken because it’s such an amazing thing to behold. The skill to be able to weave one language into another so seamlessly. When my brain is very much like, “We’re in English right now and it’s going to be difficult to swap modes.”
Nermeen: I do relate to that when it comes to writing. They’re two separate things to me. It almost feels like I’m forcing them apart, which is an unpleasant experience. I used to read about people who wrote bilingually, but I do feel that that severely restricts your audience, because my Arabic is not just Arabic, it’s Egyptian Arabic. It’s very specific. At no point do I speak Fusha Arabic. So, honestly, it’s not a struggle writing in English. It comes very easily and naturally to me, and I feel like I do know how to express myself. I know a lot of bilingual people who tell me that they feel they can express their feelings better in Arabic and that they think better in English, but with me, it’s the opposite. I feel like when I’m super passionate or talking about something really engaging, I tend to revert to English. When I moved back to Egypt, I started to lose vocabulary for everyday objects and actions in English. So, there was this huge disconnect between my being able to philosophize for hours about abstract theories and ideas in English and not being able to, like, describe a specific illness or a mundane action in the same language. I felt that disconnect in my writing and my attempts to incorporate Arabic came off forced.
Nour: I mean it is forced isn’t it, you’re trying to force two languages to exist on a page, in a stylistic manner.
Nermeen: Exactly! They’re literally on opposite sides of the page! Arabic, especially its formal version, is super rich and literary and intimidating to me in a way that English is not, because it’s easier to colour your English with whatever culture you’re a part of, because it kind of adapts.
Nour: I mean, our poems have Arabizi words in them, where a 2 can represent an Arabic letter for us. English is very malleable.
Nermeen: Whereas, Arabic tends to be exclusive in a way.
Nour: Arabic and its language fundamentalists will have our heads, even writing in 3ammiya.
Nermeen: Exactly, it’s still taboo.
Nour: It’s very taboo, to publish a book in 3ammiyya that everyone could read? The audacity.
Nermeen: I now like twisting and moulding English to fit what I want to express rather than the other way around. I’m now cool with intentionally fucking up English as much as possible. It’s like this is mine, and I can do what I like with it, and that goes back to the “colonizer’s tongue.” It’s not really the colonizer’s if I’ve taken it and done whatever I want with it. That’s why regarding English as merely the colonizer’s tongue is a really reductionist way of looking at language, because its primary function is to convey meaning. I feel like we’ve been given English in a way, but we’ve also made it our own in so many different ways to not uphold this essentialist idea of the colonizer’s tongue versus the “pure” mother tongue.
Nour: Well, what is the pure mother tongue, you know.
Nermeen: Exactly, because we don’t even speak Fusha Arabic. And Egyptian Arabic is its own language basically. It’s really open and malleable, unlike Fusha, and we keep adding to it. I think it’s because of Egypt’s position as a mass producer of entertainment and content. I used to meet a lot of Arabs from different countries who would say, “It’s really hard to keep up with Masr because half the time you use so much slang, and we have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.” So, Egyptian Arabic is a language I’m really fond of.
Nour: I really love it, we have some slangs whose root I’m trying to find in Arabic but they turn out to be Italian or Greek words and I wonder how I would have known that.
Nermeen: So, another question: In what ways do you still relate to what you wrote?
Nour: I don’t know, I feel like there was a lot of anger in that poem.
Nermeen: Anger in what sense?
Nour: It was trying to be very biting in a way I don’t feel. I wanted it to be more playful. If I wrote it now, it would be more playful than I felt at the time. I felt more anger when I was writing it than I guess I currently hold around language. There’s also that sense of searching for language and meanings and wanting to relearn, so it’s coming from a place of critiquing, a place of criticizing one’s self and language.
Nermeen: There’s this kind of violence that comes with trying to depart from what you used to believe and learn something else. I feel like I’ve mellowed out over the years.
Nour: I felt like that poem was sort of militant almost, but I’m very silly deep down I may have felt angrier than I intended. It was more directed at myself and my relationship with language.
Nermeen: I always did this thing where I addressed this invisible reader from a different culture than the one I was brought up in. I would feel the need to explain concepts and phrases. I no longer feel the need to do that. And it’s not even that I no longer have the energy or capacity, it’s more like, “This is who I am, I will not explain that to you.” And that’s not even necessarily in a militant kind of way, like you said. It’s just eshta, whatever.
Nour: I feel like that poem was more for me. It came from a place of sense-making and not always having all the answers, all the words. You’re always struggling and always trying to piece together language, or that’s what I felt at the time. There’re so many languages going on in your head and, for me, I’m always trying to unpack them, break them down, and understand them. I was struggling in a way that I’ve kind of made peace with. I feel more confident now. I grew up having my Arabic made fun of a lot and that dissuaded me from speaking it, but as an adult I’ve embraced it and embraced the mistakes. It’s interesting to look back on this poem and to know that my mind and my mouth do choke out Arabic words, but I’m at a place now where I’m like, so what? And that’s why I kind of referred to that poem as militant or angry. Looking back, I’ve stopped trying to force myself to communicate in a way that I…
Nermeen: …works for other people.
Nour: Or is almost for optics, almost for someone else’s comfort, or whatever. This is what is comfortable for me and I’ll do my best to accommodate everyone. But it’s reciprocal, you know. We do all speak different languages, even within the same language.
Nermeen: Language is endlessly fascinating. Most of the time, I use this hybrid language where both languages use one another as a crutch, and I use either language to fill in the gaps of what I want to say. I feel like I’m only being my full authentic self when I use a mixture of both languages. I feel like that’s affected my ability to speak either one purely on its own, but I don’t know. I’m a lot more relaxed about it now, because I don’t care as much about sounding ‘smart’ or being able to converse in just one language.
Nour: It’s been absolutely wonderful to talk language and have this conversation with you, Nermeen.
Nermeen: Likewise.
Nour Kamel (she/they) writes, edits, and bakes things in Egypt. Kamel writes about identity, language, queerness, gender, oppression, family, and food. Their writing appears in several publications and their chapbook Noon is part of the New-Generation African Poets series.
Nermeen Hegazi is a writer, photographer, and translator from Alexandria, Egypt, who is currently based in Cairo. Topics of interest include the body, food, vulnerability/softness, intersectionality, liminality, language, genre-bending, storytelling, and multidisciplinary art.