Dad,

I want you to know this wherever you are. I’m struggling.  I don’t want your legacy to become the main influence over my sense of self and or cultural identity. You chose to leave your family and country behind and that had a lasting impact on who you were. I felt this when you tried to teach me Arabic, teach me soccer, or religion. I felt this when you asked me to come to the phone and speak to a nameless person on the other end of the line who could barely understand me.  There are times when I was being my true self in front of you and in that moment I trusted you I trusted your teaching. And your disapproval of my behavior led to my own self disapproval. It is still going on. I constantly replay moments in our past as echoes of that disapproval. I constantly replay that moment when you tried to record my voice, my words in Arabic so that you could send the tape back to the family in Egypt. But I was silent I did not know what to say I was caught between  just not knowing the language and not knowing what you wanted me to do. And all you could say was speak you son of a bitch. And now I have to remind myself that you were just frustrated and it doesn’t sound so bad in Arabic as it does English . Well that’s simply not true. I did not know Arabic and it’s clear to me now that I miss understood you in more ways than ever. I will not define myself by how much of an Egyptian you want me to be. I will not define myself  by how often I pay meaningless visits to people I hardly know. I don’t want to remember the part of you that disapproved of me. I want to remember our days in the backyard passing the soccer ball around. I want to remember when we all sat around the movie projector  and felt the heat of its lamp and the warmth in the room it created as we watched movies of your days in Egypt with mom or our days in Florida. I’m going to Egypt again and I know that there will be many moments where I will recall your disapproval where I feel like half  the Egyptian that you want me to be. But I am now a father of two children myself and I did not teach them Arabic. And they do not know how to participate as devout Muslims in their religion or the religion of Islam that they inherited. They are free to be whoever they want to be and believe whatever they want to believe.  I taught them to put smiles on peoples faces and to be as true to themselves as they could be. I welcome any expression of their true self and I laugh at the hiccups along the way. Because that’s what they are they’re just hiccups. I’m referring to the process of discovering who we are . And I’m angry because you didn’t let me discover who I was. You imposed upon me. I am angry because you wouldn’t let me wear the cross just so I could see what it was like. Well I want to let you know that my son wanted us to have a menorah  at Christmas time. And I know you think that’s crazy. But I celebrated his journey. He thought it was a beautiful thing to light candles during Hanukkah. And I think it’s beautiful to. And I just wish you could allow me to have my own journey . But now from where I set that type of request doesn’t matter. It’s no longer a request it is now a state of you know my existence. I am on my own journey and it does not include my religion and it does not include my Egyptian family . I don’t know exactly where it will go, but I do know that this journey will emphasize who I am and not who you wanted me to be.

Sincerely

Madi