What the "Main Page" Really Costs[edit]
Let me be clear: I never set out to build a "main page" for anything. Not for my life, not for my identity. I just wanted to belong. At 10, arriving in Brooklyn with my mother’s koshari in a Tupperware, I thought belonging meant becoming American—shedding the Egyptian rhythms in my step, the Arabic phrases that slipped out when I was tired. I thought the cost was minimal: a little confusion, a few awkward moments.
In my experience, the real cost was far deeper. I gave up the effortless belonging I’d seen in my cousins back in Cairo—where a single word could summon a whole family, where no explanation was needed. I stopped calling my grandmother Ummi in public, afraid of the questions. I traded the comfort of being known for the exhausting work of being explained.
What did I gain? The ability to translate not just words, but silences. To sit with a Palestinian farmer and an Israeli engineer, not as a mediator, but as someone who understands the weight of the unspoken. To hear my mother’s voice on the phone, still asking if I’ve eaten ful medammes today, and feel the bridge between Cairo and Brooklyn humming under my feet. I gained a life where "home" isn’t a place, but a conversation.
Was it worth it? Yes. But only because I stopped seeing it as a trade. It wasn’t giving up Egyptian for American—it was weaving them together. My grandmother used to say, "The best bread is baked with two hands." I thought she meant literal hands. Now I know she meant two worlds.
The cost? I’ll never have the luxury of being "just" anything. I’ll always be the one who has to explain why ma’loub tastes like childhood, or why a simple "how are you?" in Arabic can carry a lifetime of history. I’ll miss the ease of not having to translate myself. But when a young Egyptian-American in Brooklyn texts me, "I finally get why my mom cries when she hears Umm Kulthum," I know the bridge is worth every step.
The bridge isn’t built yet, but we can start walking toward it.
— Omar Hassan