Later that night my mother and I had dinner at a seafood restaurant along the Nile. Ferry boats drifted by, blaring Arab music and casting bright lights onto the water. Despite the unseasonably cool temperature and jovial atmosphere, my mother could tell I was distraught. “Shoo?” she asked. What’s up?

“How much does a camel ride around the pyramids normally cost?”

She reached for a pumpkin seed and cracked it open with her teeth. “Two, three guinea.” Approximately eighteen cents. “Why?” she asked, spitting out the shell. “How much did you pay?”

I passed my napkin in front of my mouth as I answered. “Fifty dollars.”

“Fifty U.S. dollars? Was it a turbo-powered camel?”

“No, but the guy said—”

“Of course the guy said! Do you believe everything everyone tells you?”

I’d been swindled, of course. Why hadn’t Farah said anything? Unless she’d been in on the deal, I saw no excuse for her ignorance. She was Egyptian—shouldn’t she know better?

Of course the problem was that I should’ve known better. Though I’d been enjoying the role, I wasn’t actually a tourist. The fact that I grew up outside the Middle East doesn’t make me feel less Arab. I speak the language, albeit cautiously and brokenly, often failing to get the correct pronunciation and inflection. Fairuz, Oum Kalthoum, Abdel Halim Hafez—classic Arab singers, as important to the musical landscape in the Middle East as the Beatles are in the West—I can sing their songs by heart. I’ve spent long, seemingly endless nights in Nablus, in un-air-conditioned homes in dry August heat, sleeping on feather-stuffed mattresses and pillows as rough as the hair on a camel’s back. I’ve marched and protested on the Washington Mall in support of ending government funding for foreign occupations in the Middle East.

Yet it’s the idiosyncrasies of culture that keep me an outsider, and leave me with a persistent and pervasive sense of otherness, of non-belonging. Basic but nuanced knowledge; the stuff that no one really teaches you. That an invitation for eight o’clock really means nine thirty. In Beirut, I once arrived at a rehearsal dinner on time, and the restaurant’s staff was still cleaning up from the night before. That no one wears flip-flops outside the house except to the pool. That noting one’s weight gain is an expression of love, and that every price, rule, and border can and must be negotiated.