Basma Zaki

Human beings are interesting creatures. You get to meet one of them, and your brain immediately starts trying to fill in their little pieces out of those very short first encounters, after which you assume you’ve had a very clear picture of who they really are. But when the ice slowly starts to break, and […]

One thing that living alone is slowly changing about me is how I’m starting to appreciate and genuinely celebrate my little triumphs. Sometimes I lay in bed at night after a completely unproductive day, and right before I start feeling bad about my existence, I find myself smiling at how I’ve managed to open a […]

I have to admit it’s extremely satisfying to hang around people who, for the most part, financially support themselves. Around them, you no longer need to filter so many of your thoughts. You no longer have to hold in your complaints about how expensive you think a certain something is, because they would undoubtedly understand. […]

Something about the way you hug each other changes as soon as you realize you might not be sharing that hug as often as you’d like to. Something about that realization makes your hugs way tighter, more loving, and a lot more wordy through the silence. There’s that hug on your first meeting in a […]

I never, ever, ever, EVER thought I’d say this, but I freaking love grocery shopping. I love walking into the store knowing that I intentionally chose to do this, instead of possibly spending my week clicking a few buttons on my phone and having the fastest food arriving right at my doorstep in just a […]

It always amazes me how some places tend to permanently store our memories, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve last visited them. They’ll just continue being there, even while we’re physically not. A tear that was shed at a certain spot. A genuine smile that once broke through around another corner. A secret […]

Distance sucks. It totally does. And yet some sides of it tend to make it a little more bearable. When you know you won’t be able to experience being around someone for as long as you‘d like to, it changes a lot. You start noticing little things about them that you might’ve never paid attention […]

  A few weeks back, I had to visit my bank to get something done. It sounded easy in my head and yet, the person I talked to there managed to make me walk away with an unprecedented amount of rage. He didn’t sound like he wanted to help, and kept asking for things he […]

Around lunch time today, my Syrian co-worker called to say she’s 10 minutes away, and asked if I can wait for her so we’d eat together. I started daydreaming about the food, when she called again 5 minutes later totally panicking and saying, “فقع الدولاب!”, which in my dialect means something along the lines of: […]

Growing up, Eid has always been a pretty big deal to my sister and I. We used to stay up every Eid eve and had our Eid morning rituals, too. It felt so special and I loved being part of everything we planned together. Until she had to move, and Eid hardly felt the same […]

The moment you realize that the lives of people you (used to) know, aren’t put on hold while you’re not around to witness them. I scroll through my feed. I scroll through my feed, and I come across the profile of someone I haven’t spoken to in years. “Woah, this person still exists?” is all […]

My pain hurts much worse when I think of it in terms of وجع My shame feels less shameful when I forget all the عار it actually carries My helplessness hits harder when it combines both عجز and ضعف together I wonder what is it about the letter ع that shatters my heart into so […]