Don’t Lock Me In
Communicative, friendly and outgoing — that’s how Farida, a 22-years old girl from Egypt, describes herself. She likes to be around people and spends time with her friends as much as she can — doing assignments together, chilling, playing ping-pong, or watching movies.
“I am a very outgoing person. I am not a homie person at all. Don’t lock me in.”
Farida has a genuine curiosity about people, places and events and this is what brought her to study Business in London, as soon as she finished High School. Unfortunately, it turned out that the academia there didn’t suit her and after a year she transitioned to the American University in Cairo. Currently, she is a junior, majoring in Business Administration and Journalism and Mass Communication and pursuing a minor in Political Science.
“I was too eager to travel. I just wanted to get out of Egypt. I came back with a lot of experience, maybe not from my studies, just from how I was actually exposed to a lot of people from a lot of places,” she says.
Farida wishes that one day she would live somewhere in Europe. As much as she loves Egypt, its history and people, she admits that she doesn’t really belong there. “People here don’t like to be more. People here are settled. The entire world has a lot more to offer and a lot more to think about. The people out there — everyone wants more and that’s not a bad thing. That’s how I want to live when I say I want to live there.”
The biggest reason to get out of Egypt is because she thinks that people there are completely ignorant, living in their own bubbles, and don’t really have an idea of how the outer world works. For her, ignorance is what influenced the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 the most. “Egyptians were trying to make Egypt a better place, but ignorance covered up all the good they were trying to do. They didn’t know much about what they were trying to do. They didn’t realize that in trying to make the country a better place they ruined the economy we had and other things.”
This is one of the reasons why Farida is continuing with her Political Science studies. She hopes to change how people “think and act and acknowledge stuff, especially how Egyptians do.”.
She shares that since 2011 things have gotten better, but overall, everything is going at a slow pace, without much progression. She shares that the current situation with the outspread of the COVID -19 virus is causing panic, but for her, it is more an economical war, rather than an actual pandemic. She believes that after certain economies are being destroyed, everything will come to an end. “We will go back to our normal lives hopefully,” she says.
In her “normal life”, Farida enjoys spending her time writing or researching different things that interest her. “I like knowing stuff big time. I like to always be upfront with what is going on…I am the kind of person who always wants to know everything about everything.”
Farida speaks with excitement about her writings and shares that compliments about them make her proud, but other great things are also awaiting her in the future. She laughs and adds: “My greatest achievement is still yet to come.”
Farida Elmaghraby, interviewed by Sofia Drenkova.
Photographs by Farida Elmaghraby
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Sofia Drenkova studies Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Bulgaria. Sofia enjoys exploring different cultures and getting to know new people.
