Ash-Smeared Gospel for the Last Taxi Out of Ramses Station

I have seen the youth of God boiling beneath the veil,

sweating incense and kerosene beneath the metro flicker,

scriptures folded in the back pocket of a knock-off Levi’s,

and sandals worn thin from running from prophets and uncles alike.

*

They crowned me downtown with barbed wire rosaries,

made me chant Kýrie while waiting for the internet café to open.

We prayed like addicts behind the dumpster at McDonald’s,

spitting psalms between cigarette burns and PDF sermons with no author.

*

I have eaten theology written on the backs of tissue packs,

licked spilled coffee off Scripture pages in secondhand bookstores,

and watched Christ weep through the glass at 2 a.m;

While a man played blues scales on a beat-up Yamaha.

*

My Egypt

where saints are stitched into phone cases,

and every youth group meeting ends with

a half-translation of Pentecost and a full-body panic attack.

*

I have howled beneath billboards of oil tycoons

while angels with blistered wings wept on rooftops.

I wrote gospels on bathroom mirrors in eyeliner

and they wiped them clean with Windex and shame.

*

A priest cries in a stairwell

because he touched heaven and couldn’t hold it.

He said love doesn’t come with PowerPoint slides

and then coughed blood into his cassock.

*

Who taught me the name of God in the whisper of plastic chairs scraping tile?

Who taught me to raise my hands in worship and then slap my own face for feeling too much?

Who taught me theology through power outages and

battery-powered preachers with cracked voices and no backing track?

*

I saw Jesus in the silhouette of a microbus mirror,

face split by LED lights,

body bent like Arabic calligraphy on the spine of a used Qur’an,

and he told me:

“Write, even if no one listens.

Write, even if they call it heresy.

Write, because My body still burns

in the stairwells of Heliopolis and the playlists of broken teenagers.”

*

I have been baptized in Red Bull and radio static.

I have called out to Mary on the balcony of my grandmother’s flat,

and she answered in the voice of the midnight air, saying:

“Don’t you dare stop loving in the land of executioners.”

*

I’ve kissed communion off the lips of the lonely,

been absolved by baristas with cross tattoos,

confessed to strangers in line for the ATM,

and they forgave me with silence so loud I thought it was thunder.

*

I know the rhythm of ecclesial PTSD,

the rhythm of catechism turned into codependency,

the sound of a chalice filled with dust.

I danced to the Eucharist like it was forbidden: drums and bass.

*

Who gave me these flames in my ribs?

These doctrines in my blood that cannot be exorcised?

Who told me love was a syllabus, and holiness a dress code,

and then stoned me when I laughed mid-sermon?

*

I have sat with boys who cry in shawarma wrappers,

because they cannot name who they are

without summoning curses from both church and mosque.

I have sung lullabies to queer friends with ash on their foreheads

and told them:

“You are a gospel they won’t dare canonize,

but I see your halo like graffiti on the walls of the metro.”

*

I’ve seen angels break curfew.

I’ve seen demons speak in tongues.

I’ve watched the breath of God rise like steam from a bowl of koshary

and swirl into the faces of doubters.

*

There is a Christ buried in the rubble of Maspero,

bleeding through concrete and censorship,

speaking through the teeth of children

who dares to write poetry during Bible study.

*

I’ve recognized disciples who carry Switchblades and Gideons,

monks who DJ in underground clubs,

nuns who ghostwrite protest chants.

I’ve worshiped with the damned in cafes,

touched heaven beneath flickering fluorescent lights.

*

I saw Judas in the mirror and Peter in my doubt,

but still I walked barefoot across the Nile in dreams

chasing the echo of a voice that told me,

"The Kingdom is not a church. It's a wound that sings."

*

And when the trumpet did not sound,

we built one from soda cans and fury.

We blew truth into the alleys

until the Church cracked open like a sarcophagus

and the bones of every silenced prophet rose and danced.

*

Cairo is the cathedral where saints wear sneakers

and God hides in Spotify playlists.

And I;

I am not holy.

I am not clean.

But I am the last page of Revelation scribbled in Arabic

on a napkin soaked in tea and tears.

*

So come,

gather your doctrine and your doubt,

your eyeliner and your ash,

your queerness and your creed,

your psalms and your panic

*

And howl with me beneath the Nile moon

until the stars confess our names.

Until the pulpits tremble.

Until the choir breaks rhythm.

Until the ghosts of the martyrs

open their mouths and scream

not in anger,

but in the language of love

we were never allowed to speak.