المتجر

“Safe streets, for the city never sleeps.

The sound of dice rolling across the tables.

At the corner, the smoke of shisha rises,

and the voice of Umm Kulthum. No, I think I’m only imagining it,

for her voice, too, has gone,

like everything else I summon from memory.

A café for men, no place for a woman wandering the streets at night.

All I have left is the rhythm of the night,

a nocturnal walk with the hands of the clock.”

“All the Streets of the City” by Noha Abdel-Rasoul