When I received the news that I had received a scholarship to study on a year-long Arabic programme in Cairo, my initial excitement was misplaced. The promise of exploring this crazy city and building a new network of connections energised me. I bombarded friends with experience living in Cairo with requests for recommendations: historical sites, ruins, restaurants, hip neighbourhoods. I wanted to see it all. Immediately. I filled my phone’s notes page with ever-growing bucket lists. In the weeks before my move, I rejoiced in visions of me thriving in Cairo, having adapted to the rhythms of city life with a newfound confidence in my Arabic. Farewell coffee-dates with my network of university friends were characterised by barrages of questions as to what my new life would look like. I would confidently respond, naïvely thinking I had the answers.

When I say my excitement was misplaced, I refer to the way I actively wanted to explore the city. The way I believed that I would set the terms of my own enjoyment in Cairo: I would decide what I felt and when, I would decide what I felt like exploring and discovering at set times. But it didn’t take long for me to realise that in a relationship with Cairo, you’re never the one who calls the shots. Much like me, this city is simultaneously a compulsive control freak and a chaotic, loose canon and likes to remind you of its power over you. In other words, the unpredictability of Cairo is mutually exclusive with any efforts to plan and predetermine almost anything. As I learned, you have to fall into an overwhelming sense of powerless here, especially as an outsider, and let the city control you and you will learn so much in the process.

Apart from some generic Amr Diab songs, my knowledge of Arabic and particularly Egyptian music was limited before I moved to Cairo. However, music is something that is so intrinsic to Egyptian society and culture, my repertoire soon expanded. Music, particularly the soothing warble of Fairuz and Um Khalthoum in the morning, and more modern, upbeat groups and singers by night, is the thread that provides some coherence to the discombobulated Cairene soundscape.  Playlist exchanges and song recommendations from course mates and Egyptian friends allowed me to arrive at a newfound appreciation of music as a beautiful means of transgressing cultural boundaries. Music has been something that brought course mates and me together. I know that I will look back on memories of us dancing carelessly to maharaganat on feluccas, studying and reading together to classics of old Mutribun. We quickly developed a tradition of asking whether ‘fi bluetooth?’ whenever we took a taxi together and one of us would connect, taking song requests.

It was one of these taxi rides, I remember the exact journey, over the winding, overlapping highways returning from al-Azhar, when I first heard the Lamis Khan song Mesytara. Although I knew that the root of this word س-ط-ر is related to the semantic field of power and control and knew that the م at the start of it implied that it was an active participle, it never dawned on me exactly what Mesytara meant: control freak or, literally, the one who controls or strives to control. A friend remarked that this song reminds her of me when I cook in the context of a long-standing joke that I cannot let anyone help me or be involved in the kitchen. She is right, the song and this word resonates with me a lot. I laughed at her remark and my friends joined in too; a ‘control freak’ is someone who likes control so much it is often comedic—think of pop culture references like Monica Geller. But on reflection, I realised I don’t like control, but I need it and can’t cope without it. Not knowing the exact structure of my day makes me feel panicked; if something arises that disrupts the tight schedule I’ve made for myself I feel lost. Similarly, my addiction to control extends to my relationship with food, sport and my body: I feel safer when I am the one who has prepared whatever I eat; when I do not have full control over these things, I become anxious. I say I love to run, but really, I desperately need it, to feel productive and in control. To everyone who knows me, I’m a control freak who appreciates organisation and structure. A perpetually stressed, highly strung individual is just who I am.

This song, besides being extremely catchy, made me think about how much a) Cairo as a city is truly a Mesytara, and how b) it is impossible to be a Mesytara here and c) how much I see myself in Cairo. The chaos, the dizzyingly rhythm of life in Cairo mirrors the way I live. Yet the chaos and unpredictability of the city has really forced me to loosen my grip. I shortly learned that you cannot plan anything in Cairo. The traffic, the sheer size of the city and its inhabitants and the lack of time-management skills intrinsic to Egyptian culture mean that adherence to fixed timings, and even to some extent, the practice of keeping to a rigid schedule, even in an academic context, is futile. The notion of time being a polychronic, fluid concept initially sent me, and I assume would send any other Mesytara, into a state of panic. I learned that being on time or early for anything is kind of embarrassing and definitely serves as proof of your non-Egyptian status. This initially irritated me.

The chaos in every aspect of everyday life: formal institutions, restaurants, university and even healthcare services, was something I had trouble adjusting to. After several months of trying to fight against this unpredictably, I realised that there is only really room for one Mesytara here: Cairo herself. I became struck by an overwhelming sense of powerlessness for the first time in my life. I panicked as it seemed as though Cairo had usurped control over my life: I was losing the power to structure my days on my terms. However, I grew to realise the beauty in this. I reluctantly allowed myself to sink into the rhythms of the city, allowing it to control me. Through allowing myself to lose control a little, I have learned the power of spontaneity, a quality that has introduced me to new friends, allowed me to build new relationships and to learn new skills. I realise that in Cairo, control and planning are the enemies of all opportunities to learn, discover and grow. Beauty really does lie in the chaos and disarray here: physically and metaphysically.

A few months ago, I left Cairo for the weekend for a friend’s wedding in Amman. I had brunch in Jabal el-Weibdeh with a friend the day before the wedding. After an overdue catch up and a lot of shami bread and Turkish coffee, we had a quick look in the café’s gift shop. Here, after umming and arring as to whether my bank account would allow it, I bought a beautiful gold bracelet reading ‘صبر’ (patience). I rationalised my purchase at the time by the fact that a) I was looking for a gold bracelet to match some gold earrings I often wore, and b) as an anxious, rash, impulsive person, patience is something I am constantly reminded I am lacking. However, I look at this same bracelet now three months later, and sitting in one of Maadi’s artisanal coffee shops-cum-‘ethical’ gift shop, the word صبر has multiplied in meaning. I look back at this moment when I bought the bracelet and shake my head. This singular word has been, without a doubt, one of the words that will characterise my time living in Cairo and summarises everything this crazy city has taught me.

As I say, patience is not a virtue I possess naturally. My tendency to live my life at one hundred miles per hour is intrinsically linked to my fear of unproductivity. Being reminded from a young age that our time on earth is precious and that we must not waste it, I mistakenly internalised a persistent sense of guilt when not maximising my time and not being productive. Productivity for me was, and to some extent still is, a concept related strictly to accumulated mileage on Strava, the satisfying sight of the calories burned on my Garmin and more generally movement: movement in a physical sense and in terms of progress. Movement to me is correlated to success: academic movement and physical movement make me feel fulfilled, muffling the screams of this sense of internalised guilt. By contrast, stagnancy and relaxation means laziness, worthlessness and failure. It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to point out that this is a common response to internalised feelings of inadequacy.

When I moved to Cairo in summer, I excitedly began to realise the city’s characteristically chaotic, fast-paced rhythms aligned with who I was and everything I wanted to be. Cairo’s vastness offered me movement: the physical movement I found through the Zamalek running community, endless movement and exploration of the city’s many faces and intertwined, separated histories. The promise of linear academic progress and a fresh start at a new university also energised me. Naively, I accepted Cairo and my new life here instantly with open arms, for what it was at face value and everything it seemed to be.

Over this first summer in Cairo, I felt like I was moving constantly: making rapid progress with my Arabic, accumulating new knowledge about the city constantly, meeting new faces, establishing new connections. This barrage of ‘new’ energised me; the feeling of being overwhelmed has been something that has always weirdly comforted me, serving as a sort of indication of productivity. I found a running team and was running every morning at sunrise, whizzing home on an Uber-scooter, showering, and getting dressed for school at a dizzying, unrealistic pace. The feeling of exhaustion behind my eyes in classes, dull ache in my legs, dampened slightly by a constant stream of sugary Turkish coffee, comforted me—proof of productivity. I felt invincible: validated by my peers who were baffled by my ‘constant source of energy’, my running coach and my own mind, which perceived this dizzying pace of life as testament to success. I remember at a party one night in our student dorms, after professing my reluctance to drink and stay up late due to my commitment to early morning running training, I overhead a friend say something along the lines of ‘Cara is the healthiest person on the programme’. At the time I did not see the glaring irony in this.

The fast pace of life in this city actually succeeded to slow me down. I ignored the glaringly obvious signs that my lifestyle was unsustainable and muffled all the voices telling me to slow down until I was forced to. A hip injury sidelined me from running for what I was told would be a week, which then extended to two weeks, and then two months. I was forced to pull out of a race I was told by my coach I had a good chance of winning. And then the month after, what was meant to be my comeback race also flew out of my reach. My hip wasn’t healing, and I couldn’t understand why. Each time a physio told me to rest, I decided to find a new clinic in pursuit of a doctor who would tell me what I wanted to hear: that I was okay, I would heal imminently. I fell into a pit of deep depression; I didn’t know how to live my life without running. Seeing my friends’ social media posts after daily training sessions made me feel as though I was frozen in time, they were all moving forward, progressing, whilst I was stuck in bed, with a bag of frozen peas on my right hip. The speed of the city surrounding me exacerbated this feeling: the billowing azan punctuating the day, reminding me of my stagnancy, the traffic, the dogs barking, voices shouting—all reminded me how stuck I felt. Sidelined in the space between acceptance and denial, I felt claustrophobic in this overcrowded, hyperactive city.

I hadn’t worn the sabr bracelet since my injury as I hadn’t really been feeling like wearing jewellery in my low state. However, one Thursday evening, having finished the academic week, I was getting ready to go out for dinner with some girlfriends. I put on makeup and consciously put some effort into my outfit for the first time in weeks. I added some gold earrings and paired them with the bracelet.

An evening of laughter and love with friends felt like medicine. Lying in bed with a facemask on and a peppermint tea in my hand afterwards, I contemplated my bracelet. I began to realise patience wasn’t necessarily all about waiting; it’s about embracing temporary change and learning to be strong in the process. Whilst I initially resented Cairo’s rapid rhythms, reminding me how stuck and still my injury had made me, both mentally and physically, my thoughts towards this speed changed. My stillness enabled me to appreciate my surroundings properly for the first time. Slowness and patience plunged me into a new voyage of discovery of both me, and the city I found myself in. Patience with my injury and my healing translated into a diversion of my attention and efforts into the relationships in my life. I realised how isolating living at such speed truly was. With the 9 p.m. bedtimes no longer necessary, I saw the majesty of Cairo at night for the first time, which is when the city truly becomes alive. Jazz, feluccas, long, meandering conversations at downtown ahwas, dancing with my hair loose, seeing the city’s lights flicker from the back of a motorbike, were all wonders my former speed denied me. Sabr with the world, with my mind, with others and with my stubborn right hip are all things Cairo’s terrifying speed revealed to me.

Cairo has shown me that sabr, patience, bears a plethora of meaning and is essential to live life to the fullest. From the patience required to cross a road, waiting to order in a restaurant, queues (or lack of), waiting and patience are fundamental tools in navigating life here. Patience can mean slowing down, appreciating the blurs of colours of cars zooming past whilst waiting to cross, enjoying the chatter, the muffled voice of Faiyruz, the smell of boiling Turkish coffee whilst enduring slow restaurant service, contemplating the diversity and plurality of people in queues, all waiting for the same thing. Patience means strength also: the strength to endure an adverse circumstance, to carry on regardless of what has happened, to change and adapt to these circumstances. Patience is also kindness: being kind to yourself, others and the environment surrounding you. Patience is seeing the beauty in slowness rather than resenting it. The chaos of Cairo can only truly be perceived as beautiful if you are patient with it. You must slow down, observe the city with a fresh pair of eyes, a revised mindset and sink into its rhythms.

It really doesn’t take a genius to recognise that Cairo is a confusing, contradictory city. An Egyptian writer I admire likened Cairo to Dickens, stating that Cairo is a ‘tale of two cities’ that bear two separate narratives. I thought this line was poignant and resonant with the abundance of division and fragmentation in the space of one city. However, months after first reading this, I actually think I disagree. I think Cairo is a tale of more than two cities, and I now see fit to pluralise ‘tale’. For me, Cairo is a mosaic of intermingled, interconnected and divorced tales and narratives that are interdependent, yet completely detached from one another. The ‘New Cairo’ and ‘Old Cairo’ binary is blurred in ways that defy simple categorisation or description. Interdependence and detachment conspire together in confusing ways here.

Reading and analysing articles about the urban realities of Cairo in Fusha classes introduced me to the noun tunaqud(at). Cairo merits the reputation of um el-dunya  (Mother of the world), ‘the cradle of civilisation’, yet blatantly neglects to care for a huge majority of its inhabitants. Old Cairo is celebrated as a space teeming with history and cultural legacy yet has been left to collapse under the pressure of successive economic crises and successive governments that would rather prioritise constructing a brand new ‘Cairo’ fit to host the city’s elite and elite visitors. Cairo will welcome you with open arms, yet will reject you, interrogate you, chew you up and spit you out. The city is staggeringly hot (especially in summer and especially for a Brit) yet is bitingly cold and unwelcoming year-round.

In the space of an hour car journey, you can travel from the bustling, historic downtown district and the streets surrounding Tahrir, to Cairo’s many ironically named compounds including but not restricted to ‘Dreamland’, ‘London’, ‘Paradise’. On this journey you can visibly see a disappearance of the downtown smog, recognise a diminuendo of the unmistakable Cairene soundscape, and acknowledge a shift from East to something that aspires to be or strives to emulate West. I once read an article that described these compounds in New Cairo as what would roughly translate as, ‘paradise, but only kind of.’ Cairo erects a blurry boundary between paradise and hell, pleasure and pain. Both extremes can be located in both spaces, to a similar degree, thus, the futility of these far away, segregated compounds augments the confusion of Cairo. Constantly moving in irregular, unpredictable motions, grasping an understanding of Cairo is an equally, changing, ongoing action, or perhaps it is more appropriate to define understanding Cairo as an ephemeral, impossible and dynamic endeavour.

The contradictory nature of the city allowed me to see the contradictions in myself, and that healing and learning is a contradictory, confusing process that pushes and pulls. Slowing down and living intentionally amidst the chaotic, arrhythmic cityscape; learning patience in a place and a period in my life that superficially demanded haste; and learning to love myself and others in an environment often filled with spite and sorrow has been confusing to say the least. As easy as it is for a foreigner, someone not directly impacted by decades of political, economic turmoil and lingering legacies of colonialism, to romanticise the ambiguity and contradictions of Cairo—the practice of learning from such confusion—can be productive for everyone. Contemplating Cairo’s contradictions and confusion encouraged me to contemplate the confusion within me. Much like my process of learning to sink in to the city’s control, sinking in to this internal and external confusion, letting it consume me wholly, endowed me with a newfound energy to better navigate life’s twists and turns. Ultimately, Cairo taught me that contradiction is something not to be dismissed as a conundrum or frustration, but rather a tool we must scrutinise, examine, to better understand ourselves and the world around us.