Home is where your attempts to escape cease – and at a bar in New York, I stopped running | Mona Eltahawy

After an attack by riot police in Cairo, I returned to the US with both arms in plaster, and found there would always be a place at the table for me

• In our end of year series, writers and public figures remember the place or time when they felt most at home

I can't remember how I got the sequinned skirt on but I'm pretty sure the eyeliner was wobbly. Both arms in a cast does not precision cat-eye make. But it was New Year's Eve and what's the point if you're not going to sparkle, and I'm an Egyptian in New York so the black eyeliner was practically a national duty.

And then I went round the corner, crossed the street and entered Chez Lucienne, my local and the neighbourhood French restaurant, foolishly with no reservation, and got a table anyway because all the waiters knew me. I could tell you which country each of them had supported in the previous year's World Cup because I was the only person at the bar in the middle of the day watching matches being held hours away in South Africa.

Mona Eltahawy writes the FEMINIST GIANT newsletter. She is the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls and Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution