Like any doctoral student, I wanted to write a compelling dissertation with meticulous archival research. The archive is often defined as the state’s official depository of administrative documents. In my case, the National Archives in Egypt has somewhat mythic status: an object of perennial desire that can prove frustratingly difficult to access. And yet, there is a frequently expressed fear among students that a dissertation written without this experience is insufficient. I had plans to use the National Archives to reconstruct a history of urban water. Instead, things turned out differently. When Covid-19 hit in 2020 I had a two-year-old son, and my daughter was born in July of that same year. Caring for young children among myriad covid restrictions foreclosed a return to Egypt, official security clearances in hand or otherwise. It was imperative at that stage to make new plans.

Nathan Shui’s essay on the 2013 Beijing Queer Film Festival considers a new geography for queer spatial tactics of interpolation. A documentary still-frame included in the author’s essay displays a collage of photographs, blue lines, and other symbols affixed to what seems to be a typical road map of Beijing and surrounding areas. These annotations serve to make queer space visible while simultaneously obscuring official or government-approved modes of interacting with the city. For me, this brings critical attention to any map’s discursive obstruction. Maps are not neutral depictions of fact: like any representation they are selective and rhetorical.