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Andre Aciman’s Aunt Flora on the split loyalty of being from two places:
“Even today, I continue to live my life that way. I cross the street on the slant, I always sit in the side rows at concert halls, am a citizen of two countries but I live in neither, and I never look people in the eye,” she said, as I, conscious of her effort to do so now, averted my own. “I’m honest with no one, though I’ve never lied. I’ve given far less than I’ve taken, though I’m always left with nothing. I don’t even think I know who I am, I know myself the way I might know my neighbor: from across the street. When I’m here, I long to be there; when I was there I longed to be here,” she said, referring to her years in Alexandria.
Out of Egypt: A Memoir
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