The following is a prose sent to us by Samaa Elturkey and edited by Nour Kamel. The accompanying picture is also of the author.

He turned 10 yesterday. I was the first one to sneak into the nurses’ room where he was still cleaned, he was purple like a fresh lavender blossom. He was screaming out of panic when I whispered into his tiny ear “everything will be okay, I would always be here”.

I was walking in my white dress in the aisle of the unknown, and the sounds of drums and his cries filling the void of our uncertainty, “where are you going... would you still love me?”. I nodded with reassuring eyes, “everything will be okay”.

I missed his birthday. I slumbered out of depression and bruises of the last fight. I barely uttered, “happy birthday, Yaia.” “Are you okay?” he asked, but this time I could not reply; Everything was not okay.

I missed his graduation party, his hallucination from fever, his first science project, and his chess competition. For five years, I could not make it.

He panicked when his pet was in heat. No... it would not be taken to mate. Those who marry never come back. My breath stopped.

I could not take his tiny hands, patting my knees. I was still in pain after last night's beating. I shouted at him. He withered away. That month he shivered while asking, ”are you okay? Can I touch you?”

He is standing on the doorstep of teenage stubbornness now, yet he scrunches up on my lap like a 5-year-old baby. Time froze, we wanted to catch up on what we missed, but we wouldn't.

The clock is ten steps ahead of us, we won’t make it in time. I am here on his 10th birthday and for all the football games; he no longer likes chess. I compensate for all the lullabies we missed, and open my ears to all the stories I did not know, or at least I imagine I do.

My mother received the divorce certificate instead of me, I could not make it to the registration office. I touched the paper and the words blurred. For a week I kept looking at the lines, trying to understand what was written. For me, it was a receipt, “we [hereby] certify that 5 years of your life are gone, they cannot be restored nor changed and we are not responsible for the aftermath”.

Time: it is not about digits, zones, and latitudes. A global system of tenses or a chance that I might miss. It is my life. I spent one-third of it on abuse, 5 years of his childhood on abandonment, and the rest of our lives to fix it.    

For him, a safe space is us all alone beside the Nile, having breakfast on a sunny day. But how can a safe space be the raw smell of panic? We are together now because I was not here, and we are intimate because distance lit the homesickness inside our hearts for years.

How would you raise a child with your shitty values? This was a concern. Children need care, solid morals and attention... lots of attention. Do you want to raise them to be faggots? To believe that they can be anything they want to be? How dare you?

He pushed me so I could understand how to raise a child, but instead, I fell with all the weight of my baggage on the small head of one of them. He cursed me because raising a child takes lots of attention and morality, so I gave a young boy a plate full of rage and hated him for not liking it.

He is now safe where he is, as much as he is hurt. My blue knees saved him and ruined the rest of our lives. Stay away because I love you, and come closer because I cannot live without you.

Time was stolen from my life as much as from yours; peals of laughter, promotions, knowledge, playdates, night cuddles, surprise visits, activism, change, soups, lego, conference, comfort, belief in love and healthy knees and childhood. If you called the thief, he would answer “these are years of your lives that I am no longer able to give back”.