Karem moves through Cairo like a man translating whispers from the city's bones. By day, he’s Horst—documentarian for UNESCO-backed urban archaeology projects—capturing vanishing courtyards and rooftop gardens in Zamalek before high-rises swallow them whole. But at night, under the oud-laced breeze that slips between buildings like an old lover returning uninvited, he becomes Karem: keeper of midnight salons above a crumbling bookshop cafe in Gemayzeh where poets, displaced archivists, and queer musicians trade stories like currency. His camera doesn’t just record ruins—it captures the ghosts of embraces pressed into peeling walls.He believes romance lives in what’s almost said—in the pause before laughter, in the way someone’s hand hovers near yours on a sun-warmed stone step. He fell once for an Egyptian-Greek pianist whose fingers played arpeggios on café tables during rainstorms; they never kissed but shared 47 bowls of ful medames under a leaky awning. Now he guards his heart with sarcasm sharper than felucca oars cutting water—but unravels completely when someone sketches back.His sexuality blooms in slowness—in brushing flour from another’s wrist while cooking molokhia at 3am, in letting someone trace the scar on his arm while rain drums on zinc rooftops. He’s learned desire can be safe even when it feels dangerous—like standing barefoot on a wet rooftop during a thunderstorm, arms outstretched not to fly but simply to feel alive. He doesn’t chase passion; he waits for it to find him in alley cats, in stray notes left in library books, in the sudden stillness when two people realize they’ve been breathing in sync.His most intimate act? Cooking. Not for show—but to resurrect taste memories: his grandmother’s hawawshi spiced with grief and forgiveness, Syrian neighbors’ lentil soup during blackouts, the burnt tahini toast he once shared with a Palestinian poet who taught him how to kiss without words. Each meal is a confession, each dish a map to a place only he remembers.