Let us grieve the costs we pay for being non-ideal imperial subjects, but may our grief not distract us from the real story. May it propel us into fury.

Still, let me end with clarity: I had a university to go to; Gazan universities have all been obliterated by U.S.-funded Israeli scholasticide. I had a family that couldn’t join me; entire Palestinian bloodlines have been erased from the public record.

My Arab, Muslim family also feared detention at the airport or deportation if they flew to the U.S. When Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested, they begged me to leave.

I fled ten days before my graduation, my cap and gown folded in a suitcase. Another degree. Another dictatorship. Another graduation taken.

I had spent months saving up and working to make it possible to fly my family over—to finally have the moment Egypt had denied us. But U.S. authoritarianism had another curveball.

After the recent wave of ICE arrests, and having been doxxed, it grew too risky.

Years later, in exile, a scholarship allowed me to pursue my three-year MFA at the University of Pittsburgh, my first real college experience. While many cringed at walking at the graduation commencement, I couldn’t wait.

I graduated in 2019 without ever setting foot on campus. On graduation day, my class held up a banner with my face and a symbolic standing ovation to recognize the could-have-been friend they had never met, but whose journey they carried with them. I was released by a miracle months later.

I was arrested from a protest the day before my freshman year at the German University in Cairo. A year in, my scholarship was revoked and I was barred from exams. I transferred to Ain Shams University, and over six years in prison, I studied for my mechanical engineering degree.