Tarek Amr’s Reviews > If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English > Status Update

Are the footnotes made up facts?! Google cannot find a Seif Deif and his book Mourner in Space-Time Continuum. There were no tuktuks in 1968. Fifi Abdou is not in El-Limby. And there is no connection between balding and urinaries in Egyptian Arabic.

As a middle-class Egyptian, do you think you have more in common with a middle-class European or American, or with a lower-class Egyptian? This book made me realize it's the latter. I love the author's style and the subtle things she observes. But at times, she makes Edward Said turn in his grave with her condescending, orientalist ideas and footnotes.

I am loving the author’s style, but the one who writes the footnotes is a moron who makes things up

No one ever talks about the punishing aesthetics of being poor