I was on top of the Staten Island ferry when it all began, for me at least. It was a blessing to be there with two of my high school friends that I have known for five years. Passing in front of the statue of Liberty, we were thinking about how far we made it in life. Blasting the folk Egyptian beats into the windy night while floating above the Hudson river was a scene we never thought we could ever partake in... but here we are. A loud noise came from my phone, ringing with the name “Mama” appearing in the middle of the screen. I picked up to find my mom more worried than ever, asking me if I am OK.
“Yes, mom. I am fine. I am so happy being here”
“Just take care because the number of confirmed cases in New York is going up. Take care and don’t travel a lot.”
It didn’t take me that long to realize that the world started changing around me. It was as if my spidey sense was activated: I am surrounded by hundreds of people; I am scratching my nose and touching my face now; this person has just sneezed; I am very close to this old man; this seat looks unclean; and a lot more things that I never thought I would ever pay attention to.
COVID-19 is a novel RNA single-stranded virus that hit the world roughly and was announced as a global pandemic in March 2020. Although the virus is not the most deadly, especially for someone who had hepatitis A three months ago, I had some flashbacks. Hep A though was not as contagious as COVID-19. Scientists have been struggling to actually identify how the virus spreads. Each case of the new coronavirus is estimated to cause two to three others. Yet this number does not reflect whether it spreads through being airborne or droplets only.
I finish my day in NYC to go with my friends to the University of Rochester in upstate New York to see more friends from back home; ones we haven’t seen in months or even years. It wasn’t that long after we arrived that we received an email that spring break was extended and school will continue online. This news hit us all in different ways, but there was one question in common: “Should we stay in the U.S. or go back home to Egypt? Are we even allowed to stay?” It became a comparison between staying safe in the rural villages of the US or going back to Cairo to be with our families. Instead of sitting together and having fun, our conversations were some variations of these unanswerable questions. I said goodbye to our friends using a sequence of feet tabs and elbow pumps, not the Egyptian tight hugs and double cheeks kisses we are used to, and headed back to Kenyon College’s campus.
My hands were always faster than me to check the virus spreading map. Not to see if I am safe, but to see if the part of my heart I left at home is. “ 20 cases … 94 cases … 256… 985… 1322” It was the first time I ever saw exponential equations in real life examples. My life was suddenly filled with what I have tried hard avoiding the past couple of years: graphs. From the beginning of the viral outbreak, the question that everyone was asking is: “When is this ending?” The only ways scientists can assess that is through patterns and trends. Even a friend from back home started plotting data and set dates for the end of this pandemic, they waited to see if their expectations were correct, and it was really beautiful seeing statistics playing in real life. There was one thing that was too early to what my friend expected: Shutting down airports
A week later, We hear the Egyptian president in an official speech shutting down the borders and declaring national lockdown. Although I was not sure that I would be going home, I never thought that I would be trapped in a foreign country away from my family. At the same time people are surrounded by their loved ones, I am left here in the village of Gambier, with my heart stranded back in Egypt. Between the four walls of my room I spend every day, counting the hours until it ends to start a new one hoping that I can have my life back. I always said that Kenyon was home, but it took me a global pandemic to realize that people are what makes it home.