“There are amazing stories, if we listen” — Zeina Shahine on storytelling, her dreams and her childhood
I first met Zeina Moustafa Shahine in the end of February, when we got assigned subjects for a writing course in university. I remember seeing the list of names and instantly being drawn in to hers. I did not know who she was, nor had I ever seen her before in my life, but I knew there was something about her. During our first conversations on Whatsapp, i felt an instant connection. She seemed so positive and open; she wrote with long “haha”s in the chat and was always ready to find a way for us to make this interview happen.
When I first saw her, a big smile was lighting up her face and luscious curls were framing the sides of it. She was sitting at home with an Adidas sweater and in the background you could hear children’s talk. Zeina was born in Cairo, on April 19 in a family with three brothers — Amr (18 years old), Youssif (10 years old) and Adam (10 years old). They currently live in New Cairo with her mother.
Zeina has many interests in passions. One of the things she has always wanted to pursue, but somehow regrets she never got around to doing, is photography. She loves taking pictures of her friends, of places she goes, of things around her. She loves telling stories through imagery and one of her biggest dreams is to make documentaries. She even has an idea of making a movie in which she compiles stories from people about the war. “There are amazing stories, if we listen,” she says as she talks about her grandfather (who took part in the war) and how he saved the life of her biology teacher.
Although storytelling is a passion of hers, she also loves looking around and examining people. This is one of the reasons she is now a psychology major in the American University in Cairo (AUC). “It makes me notice a lot of things […]. I notice the behaviour of other people around me and myself.” For her psychology is a way to get to know people better and she believes it is not that much knowledge, as it is a skill. She thinks that apart from this analytical side, people should also have a creative side — this is why her second major is Integrated Marketing Communications. She believes this would help her achieve another big dream of hers — of having her own advertising agency.
Zeina has a genuine interest in people and is generally a kind and helpful person. Her biggest dream is to work for UNICEF and help refugees and children of refugees. Her desire was born when she was part of Module United Nations at high school. There they had a project about refugees, they watched videos and read materials about them. This got her thinking that she has seen many of those people selling food on the streets but nobody has helped them. So she decided she wanted to make a change.
During our conversation Zeina also expressed her interest in sports. Especially rugby, which she took up in university. She explained to me that there are only two places in Cairo where you can practice it — AUC and the German University in Cairo. She mentioned how because of rugby she got the chance to meet many different and interesting people she otherwise would not have had the chance to. “Those people are amazing, they’re like my family.”
With the same passion that Zeina talks about her hobbies, she also talks about her hometown. “I love Cairo, I really do. It’s so full of life. Even if you’re under quarantine, if you go out in the streets, it’s always full of life, “ she says grinning. She has grown up and spent her whole life in the city. Most of her friendships stem from her early childhood and they are ever so close — those are the people she finds most dearest and mentions that sometimes she even struggles to open up to people she doesn’t know. “I’m not someone who gets close to people easily.”
Maybe this fear of getting close to people stems from her childhood. When she was young, her father used to leave the house a lot. She remembers her mother standing on the balcony, watching him come and go and her earliest memory of him leaving comes from when she was 14. “I remember, because now I’m so unaffected by it, but it’s always there at the back of my mind,” she says as she tells me the story of how she went to school with her eyes swollen of crying. Now when she thinks back to it, she is glad that this happened. “I learned how to regulate my emotions and not get affected by every single thing […]. I’m not really affected by people anymore.”
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Teodora Zlateva is a student at the American University in Bulgaria. She hopes she gets the chance to meet Zeina in person one day.
