PLEASE STOP USING NSFR IN YOUR TAGS/POSTS/BIOS !!!!!!

Academia but you're in Cairo

staying up late looking up ancient jewllery, its symbolism and the stuff it was made from and the methods they used because that was some intricatte stuff you know

having an unhealthy addiction to tea. milk tea in the morning before stting off. plain tea in the afternoon when youre back. tea with mint in the chilly hours before sunset. tea with lemon when youre sick, with honey when youre sad...

listening to asmahan and laila mourad because their voices make flowers grow in your heart. you see abd el wahab or sayed darwish's names and you know youre about to heaar the most heavenly sounds you ever have.

constant debates about history (esp modern history! which is, regarless, my favourite to study!)

thrifting books from soor al azbakeyah and soor al sayeda zeinab and coming across literal gems that were sold for cheaper than dust

your uni is probably a historical site

just kidding your entire city probably is

long walks in old cairo's warm dusty mornings

constantnly stopping short to take in the glorious architecture you see before you. buildings brimming with equal parts menace and cordial affection that are simultaneously overwhelming and welcoming

does their age take your breath or does their sheer size? does their beauty make your heart flutter or is it the deep, undeniable knowledge that theres never going to be something quite like it ever again?

youre never really out of museums to visit. theres always going to be annother you just havent spotted yet

Did i tell what "cairo" means? It is derived from the arabic word "Al Qahira" meaning, She Who is Victorious. She Who Devastates. She Who is a Conqueress. She Who Is Meciless. a drop in the rich seaof her triumphant history

Visiting the ancient temples in upper egypt, the beauty of whom is so eternally breathtaking it makes you forget the tremendous amount of stairs you had to climb to get there.

Calling north Bahari (meaning "of the sea") even tho that could also be east. But you do it anyway.

The poeple going to and fro being endearing; shout/waving greatings to one another, so full of sincerity and hope in the early morning dew. It feels less lonely somehow

Romanticising everything about life as a form of conscious escapism, like all the poets and playwrights whose blood runs i your veins

there are translated works, and then there are arabic-ized wrorks of literature. its not hard to see that you prefer the latter.

also who came up with titles like "god of sword and quill" and "prince of poets"? we need to have a conversation. i love you and so does everyone else with a basic sense of art

visiting the old palaces and castles and always coming across abandoned ones. you wonder who would dare abpndon something so beautiful. you feel an immense sadness and and a crippling blow of yearning that do nothing to remove the dust coating everything or bring the music back to the pianoforte.

going to bazaars even if you knoe youre not going to buy anything. youre here for the copper, thr bass, the spices and occasional gleap of wine red jewllery. oh and the cat you befriended right outside the coffee shop!

buying jewllery and pottery from khan el khalili or el mo'ez streerts becaue everything is just so pretty and we shop local

going to century+ old cafes and sitting at a table that might have been naguib mahfouz's who knows

analizing the "foreign" words in your dialect and feeling an otherworldluy ense of knowing when you recognize wherethe come from! plage is french! shanta is turkish! em bu comes from coptic eb mu meaning water! nunu is ancient egyptian for fragile! and so much more!

Very honest photo dump about how the month is going (i need a miracle to get me through these exams)

i feel like a person again. i feel real as i taste the salt on my skin after a run. i feel the bitter winter current seeping through my bones. i feel the soft kiss of my quilt at every point it touches on my body as it embraces me in the cold, i see the cranberry and amber hues of the sunrise every morning as i wake to chase the sun, and i smell the fragrant aroma of the garlic cloves as they sizzle in olive oil in my pan while i cook dinner for my family. winter i love you.

Dark academia playlist

it has both lyrical and classical!

dawn : the first appearance of light in the sky before sunrise

~ being awake before everyone else

~ having the whole world just for yourself

~ soft rays of light filtering through the windows

~ hopeful, serene, content

~ alone, but not lonely

(my personal favorite <3)

I'm overcome with nostalgia for a life that may or may not have been a dream.

Living the Dark academia life

Egyptian student edition

Locking yourself in your room for hours to analyze and study Ahmed Shawqi's poems.

Laughing at a pun present in the poem (also, known as "تورية ". Pronounced "Taw-re-ya") , just to follow it up with crying because of how hard the Analytical Grammer is.

Buying second hand items from tiny businesses present in flats.

Not being able to afford a dark academia aestheticaly pleasing wardrobe or having a full say in what you want to get because you still live with your parents.

Getting yelled at because you had "way too many" cups of qahwa/ready made coffee (qahwa is Arabic coffee. Ready made coffee like Nescafé).

Romantacizing studying physics (or any "hard" subject) , and focusing on it so much that you forget to study the easy subjects and now you have a load of said left out subjects.

Not being able to give enough fucks about a colonizers language to have someone correct you , but also needing to study it because it will be added up at the end of the year with the rest of your subjects.

Wanting to learn coptic (or what's supposed to be your native language) but not being able to due to the little to no time that you've got and feeling very guilty with not being in touch with your ancestry.

Not being able to get in touch with your ancestry due to the lack of information about them and knowing little about them, causing you to feel guilty again.

Having an identity crisis because "who do I belong to??" (in my case, 'am an Arab, a Copt or should I identify with both? What about the white washed part of my family?? ')

Listening to Fairouz, Chopin and hozier (and /or anyone in between) , in the morning, with a cup of coffee.

Trying to comprehend the white folks running 1st world countries with 2 paramecuims for brains, in the morning. Just to shake the thought out, because who needs to give themselves a headache, when you can simply watch a 4 hour long Arabic session and cry afterwards.

I'm an Egyptian, who lives in Egypt . And most of the posts that I see in this format, are written by folks living in 1st world countries. And of course, I don't quite relate to them. Feel free to reblog and add more to this post :)

summer (desi? stem? chaotic?) academia

swearing heavily while solving questions; going for a walk and ending up contemplating how i’m ever going to crack my entrance exam while sipping diet coke; blasting instrumentals on speaker to out-noise the construction work going on right outside my window; breathing heavily after a swim, gazing up at the sky that looks like an erin hanson painting; singing all izz well in my morning shower and crying along to give me some sunshine in my evening one; closing the blinds in the afternoon because this is summer, the sun takes a toll on my skin and sunscreen takes a toll on my wallet; missing offline classes; the only thing about my new textbooks that makes me happy is their smell; subsisting on cold coffee and indori poha; by the way, what does a social life look like?

Bro why they say "archivist" like a slur