The Completely True Tales of Um Mimi and Sharawi the Adulterer

On the way to Um Mimi!
Whenever I tell my story, I say that what led me to live with Um Mimi were two Polish breasts with unparalleled nipples. I saw them in an R-rated movie on a winter’s night that started beautifully, then turned gloomy. Although this wasn’t exactly what happened, it’s not too far from the truth.
At the time, I thought the hands of fate hadn’t been kind to me when—among all the rooms and flats, both furnished and empty, in all of Cairo’s alleys and streets—it chose for me a room without a door in a flat without a soul, where I would live with a keyed-up woman. But sometimes, it takes twenty-five years to realize that life did you a favour when it selected you to live its most absurd experience.
My story started in the fall of 1991. My grades in high school had qualified me to study in the faculty of mass communications at Cairo University. For those who don’t already know, this meant I had to fill out a form called the ‘Application of Wishes’—a poetic name that is in no way relevant to its contents. All you do is plug in the departments where you want to study in order, according to your grades, so that the coordination office can choose an available program. This is done according to a process, the inner workings of which no one knows save the employees of the Ministry of Higher Education; it’s a process that no one doubts, in order to avoid giving themselves a headache.

Read the first chapter for free: The Completely True Tales of Um Mimi and Sharawi the Adulterer