It is the day before my wedding. I flick back the brass latch of the checkered alabaster chest and the light catches the endless hoops, loops, beads and tangles of yellow gold in my grandmothers jewellery. The crimson velvet lining feels scratchy compared to the thick varnish that coats the wooden and pearly geometric shapes on the box’s exterior. Once I unload the gilded heap onto my grandmothers bed, I begin to wind my fingers through the knots that the finer chains have made around the thicker, bolder pieces. I feel every intricacy embossed under my fingertips: neatly stacked triangles constrained within larger curves of a necklace, golden teardrops shed by every ear and nose ring, florals engraved into most bangles. My grandmother tells me each design I see before me was once worn by Nubian royalty thousands of years ago. Infallible kingdoms, formidable monarchs: their power and currency in the jewellery on the wrists and necks of their loved ones. On this Golden Land, whatever catastrophe struck, you could take comfort in shade of the palm trees lining the Nile, indulge in the syrupy dates which fall in ripe,…
