I will disguise neither word nor silence
without lipstick I will speak
hoping the kohl of my eyes will not betray me
as it runs awkwardly down my cheek

A young girl of six with her parents spends time at the Cataract Hotel in Aswan. There, she befriends Ali Lawi, the Nubian servant for Agha Khan. The girl now a poet, immigrated to Montreal, recalls in a superbly poetic prose the journey to Egypt, a few years before the creation of Lake Nasser as a result of the construction of the Aswan High Dam.

Poet, novelist, translator, and stage director, Mona Latif-Ghattas has published more than twenty-five books, most of them in Quebec. Born in Egypt, she has lived in Montreal since 1966. Her work, written in French, mixes the cultures of the East and the West. Her work has been translated in Arabic, and has been the subject of numerous theses. Her latest poems, written during the Egyptian revolution, were published by L'Harmattan in Paris, in 2013.

Antonio D’Alfonso is an award-winning author, translator, and filmmaker.

Yasmine Kloth has a B.A. in French and Arabic and an M.S. in Physiology from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Yasmine lives with her husband and daughter.