Can You French Kiss During Ramadan?

▉ “This is the courtyard of Cairo’s AlAzhar Mosque, established as the city’s first in 972. I modelled it in Rhino back in 2018, somewhere in Europe. It was my white boss there who first introduced me to it, much to my surprise. No professor or employer had ever mentioned a mosque before. Now, I was hearing it alongside European medievalism and modernism, as part of an intellectual discourse on interior spaces. Strangely, I felt validated.

▉ The courtyard is original, the only space dating back to 972. It leads into a beautiful interior sequence of pointed arches set upon columns, sometimes clumped in pairs and triplets. The building is not only of considerable architectural value but has a complex history as a cultural, political and religious space, constantly evolving with Cairo. The East is not stagnant.

▉ At the office, Al-Azhar is an aesthetic. It is the architectural equivalent of me, the Muslim intern. That is why I am told to model it. And because it has pretty columns. It’s plain tokenism, but weirdly I feel some distorted gesture of inclusivity, which has been missing these three years into my architectural education.

▉ As I write this though, I am learning that it is not just a mosque. A quick search online tells me that Al-Azhar is also the world’s second oldest continuously operating university. I should know this already, but I don’t.

▉ My mind is instantly cast back to a certain first year cultural history lecture on the origins of the university institution. I remember the oldest was also first established as a mosque, in Morocco. But there is no mention of mosques, nor Africa. Only Europe. That’s how erasure starts.

▉ 'If I can’t even eat anything, why would I French kiss while fasting?' This is the response I give my boss a few summers ago when he asks me The Question, harping on technicalities, trying to find loopholes in my logic. A trademark of the all too familiar, white cis male architect-intellectual-provocateur archetype. It is the first of many, pertaining to my faith, identity or skin colour. But all questions and jokes are on the table now, since it was a mosque that I modelled after all. Acknowledgement in exchange for a little provocation. Plus, he says I can use his daughter’s nursery as a place to pray.

▉ A place to pray. Under the stairs near Melville. Three years, until they dedicated the space on the third floor to a multifaith room. I should have asked for one in 1A, for others and for myself. It would have avoided a lot of dusty knees and banged heads. But then again, I’m surely not the first student to pray at this school.

▉ It’s fashionable to put diversity on parade. Just look at our student body! But not too closely. Never mind the faculty, they’re here for the students. Our curriculum is not a mirror, but it reflects our journey. All roads lead to Rome.

▉ Rome is 2130 km north west of Cairo.

▉ 'You know, I have never met anyone like you before.' Paradoxical parting words from my boss. But there it is again, that sense of validation. It’s all a cruel colonial trick. The polite repression and derision of Others, only to be fed back to the colonised as nuggets of culture and wisdom.

▉ Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, and the shame’s still on me.”