Textual Trimmings

(I originally wrote this in early January 2018; a few days and it will be two years old. I never got around to publishing it.) Last December, as I listened to The Pogues’ “Fairy Tale of New York,” I realized that there is a chance I may not set foot again in Columbia, Manhattan, or New York. It was late December, but it wasn’t the jingle bells, the decorations, or the New Year’s festivities that made me nostalgic. It wasn’t even the emails from friends coming back home for the winter break. It took the melancholic footage of foggy and icy New York in an Irish song about lost dreams and broken hopes to do the trick. On November 18th, 2017, I was stopped by Homeland Security as I was on my way to New York to defend my dissertation at Columbia. After a lengthy and absurd interrogation, I was informed that my visa was being canceled and that I was being sent back to Egypt. Against my protestation, I was told that I should be grateful they were not deporting me, not because of anyth

This year I am going to give in to the hegemony of the Gregorian calendar and make a New Year’s resolution. In fact it is a decision I have been putting off for two years now. For the last few years, writing has been an important part of my life; for the last year, it has been, more or less, my main vocation.   I am very happy with my collaboration with 7iber and al-Adab and look forward for more. There are also a few English pieces that have not come out, either because they are stuck in the process of editing and re-editing, or because they have been inserted into the slow and merciless machinery of academic publishing. As a result, there are also pieces that are left out, cut, or trimmed, from the articles I publish, pieces that are never finished, or pieces that are too personal for these venues. So I have decided to start this blog to share my ‘textual trimmings’. -           But, Ahmed, isn’t the blogging fad over? Aren’t blogs outdated?   Yes, I do not do things whe