Backstage at the Cairo Opera House

I was one of ten mermaids. They dressed me in a two-piece turquoise costume, my chest visible behind the beads. The early swelling around the nipples. Like an expert actress, I started to cry. Ruined rehearsal. Sniffling, I gave the teacher my mother’s number. Your daughter is hysterical. She is refusing to wear the mermaid costume. There was no way I was going on stage like that. My father would be watching. I didn’t want him thinking he’d taught me nothing about the meaning of skin. My whole life I’d watched him lean on anger like a friend. I couldn’t risk it. My mother came quickly; her lips smeared an oily orange, her black fringe perfect, obscuring the early lines. It must have been late spring. She handed me an oversized pink turtleneck—ugly as a blobfish. I let her print her orange lips on my skin. Thank you mummy! Thank you! I said, though I wanted to run off and drown it. My good skin. Did you tell baba I cried?

For years I hung the concert poster in my room, opposite the bed. In the sea of small bodies, I could sometimes see a girl who looked like me—both of us swam in our good skin like swindlers.

---

Sara Elkamel (@sarafarag) is a poet and journalist living between her hometown, Cairo, and New York City. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. Elkamel's poems have appeared in The Common, Michigan Quarterly Review, Four Way Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Yale Review, Narrative Magazine, and as part of the anthologies Best New Poets and Best of the Net, among other publications. She is the author of the chapbook “Field of No Justice” (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021).