Under the Sun

Part 1

"Believe me, I am really not going to step out of that door!" I said angrily to my father. He just looked at me from under his brows and shook his head. I was left standing there when he slowly walked away from the front door. Before he turned around the corner he turned towards me and said:
"Be it your own loss."

I didn't understand the meaning of those words. He had just asked me to go for a couple of days' visit to our Egyptian cousins in Sharm el Sheikh. To me it wasn't that simple. I wasn't such a fluent Arabic speaker and I hated small talk and I didn't feel like spending my holiday in Egypt doing something that was called "polite."

Still my father's words continued to echo in my head so I found myself lifting the bag packed ready for me, opened the door carefully, and let the hot and dusty Egypt air hit me straight in the face as if saying: "There you go! You deserved that!" I sighed deeply. I didn't like fighting and I didn't shout often but it just... Ash, whatever. The visit couldn't be so bad, or at least not worse than the other visits I had been on. The only difference would just be that my family wasn't with me.

I stopped in the yard to correct my scarf, which felt surprisingly cooling even on a weather hot like today. My friends in Sweden wouldn't believe that though.

My ride arrived soon enough, which was a surprise. I had been expecting to stand there at least an hour still, if not more even. I squeezed a smile on my face, stepped in the car and greeted my aunt. "Ahlan wa sahlan", came the answer and so the trip began. Maybe this isn't going to be so bad after all, I thought. I would get to eat amazing food anyway and especially my favourite sweets, mangoes. My relatives never grew tired of feeding me those, and neither did I of eating them.

My days in Sharm el Sheikh passed by extremely quickly, and I can't deny that I had so much fun. I learned a bit more Arabic as well and the communication with my cousins wasn't as difficult as I had expected it to be. Maybe I had just been a bit too prejudiced and a bit too westernized. But that I would never admit to my parents... 

I knew that my friends in Sweden would question me on whether I saw any cute guys, but honestly speaking, I wasn't so interested in such activities. I felt it was boring and childish from someone my age. I had to tell them something though, that I knew. So the next time we went on the beach with my cousin, Nura, I tried to look at people when she was swimming. One young man caught me looking and winked. I felt disgusted and I looked quickly away. This is so not my thing, I sighed mentally. I couldn't understand how my friends wouldn't get tired of doing this from day to day in the center of Stockholm. No respect, I thought angrily in my mind but almost immediately I laughed silently at my words and slipped the sunglasses on my eyes to avoid further looks. I knew that my blue eyes attracted attention, even in the tourist spots of Sharm el Sheikh, maybe because they were on someone wearing a hijab, the Islamic scarf. I didn't see anything special in that, at least not in Sweden, but here it seemed to be something. 

I had gotten my eyes from my Swedish mother and my annoying nose from my Egyptian father. And my eyes were also quite big. I didn't think of myself as looking anywhere close to special, but not ugly either. But short yes. Poor 170 cm! I sighed again. Thighs could be a bit thinner also, I whined silently and stared at my feet through the pink skirt I was wearing. My shallow thinking was interrupted by Nura who sat back on the sunchair.