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I built two worlds for myself, which I worked hard to ensure wouldn't collide. In South Lebanon, I was my parents' traditional daughter. But in Beirut, I experimented with my looks and beliefs. Occasionally the two worlds seeped into one another: I'd forget to remove my nose piercing when visiting home on weekends, or I'd casually say I believed in civil marriage. By now, I'd rejected Eurocentric beauty norms and embraced eyeliner and kohl as an expression of my identity, also by way of Nefertiti. Wearing eyeliner seemed to lend me a sense of power reminiscent of the queen's authority. My religious mother wasn't too keen on this physical and intellectual transformation: she once stopped talking to me for days after spotting a Facebook photo of me in a bikini (she's since forgiven these transgressions). So committed was I to my eyeliner that I only ever went without it when I returned to Sidon from Beirut on weekends, and when enduring tricky bouts of depression.

During my undergraduate studies, I briefly dated a socialist who asked me what I thought of Syria's military occupation of Lebanon and told me I looked like Nefertiti in the same breath. He was smoking shisha at a café nestled in the Lebanese mountains; we were sitting outdoors. It was a gorgeous late summer evening, the kind of evening Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani wrote about so wistfully. The sun had started to set. The weather was milder than usual, but there was a breeze hinting at the imminent change in seasons, and a nearby jasmine tree made itself known to us with each waft of fragrant air. I'd just removed my oversize sunglasses, which I often hid behind. For a moment, I was worried the socialist would think me disheveled, as my eyeliner had wilted a little in the day's humidity. When he said the queen's name, I smiled coyly, then demanded a drag of the shisha. In truth, my heart was dancing—not because of the person complimenting me, but because of what he was implying: I was not only attractive, but regal. It's a rare moment in time in which I can trace the precise evolution of my confidence. I had, perhaps, finally come of age.

The third time I was likened to Nefertiti was by a British finance bro with whom I shared a corporate elevator in central London. I had left Lebanon for college and my career, and was well into my twenties at this point, though my struggles with confidence weren't too far behind me. "You look exotic," he said boldly. "A bit like Nefertiti." This time around, I bristled at the suggestion. If ever there were an Orientalist compliment, this was it. While his gaze appeared to flatten the queen, my relationship to her reached deep into my roots and identity. Nefertiti seemed a fascinating mirror in this way: what we see in the royal wife reveals more about us than we will ever know about her.

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My commitment to kohl has prevailed, to the extent that my mother never fails to ask me if I'm ill when I'm without it. On most days of nationwide lockdowns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I still donned a full cat eye for video conferences: it helped me maintain the illusion of normalcy. I wear eyeliner to Pilates, to the bodega, and when I'm alone at home. I even wore it during eight days of extreme camping in Chad, where I was researching the Wodaabe people for this book. (My eyeliner often reflects the phases of my work: when I wrote the chapter on Amy Winehouse, my wings inadvertently grew larger, until they began to touch the edges of my eyebrows.) I'm rarely if ever without the magical lines adorning my eyes, just as I am never without my culture, my ancestors, or my mother.

It's possible, of course, to assign too much meaning to one's physicality, such that beautifying oneself can become a frivolous and time-wasting mission, an exercise in vanity, or a palpable burden. But my kohl wearing has never merely been about looking a particular way (though I can't complain about its aesthetic benefits). Now, I can see my juvenile preoccupation with physical appearance was rooted in my coming to terms with a "strangeness" that was imposed upon me and that I'd internalized as a vulnerable, sensitive girl who grew up in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s and, more broadly, as a teenager learning to navigate new worlds.

Because I'd started to encounter Nefertiti's legacy everywhere—in ads on the billboards of Cairo; on the eyes of my Syrian Lebanese grandmother in Polaroid photos from the 1960s; on Saudi feminists; and on the Lebanese legend Fairuz—I'd also started to internalize the sheer power and reach of "weird" women, and resultantly myself. And because kohl originated in the East, I often felt as if I were traversing space and time and conversing with my ancestors while wearing it in the West. Today, kohl is, to my mind, a celebration of my identity and the glorious and profound histories swirling around it. When I stencil my eyes with black pigment, I am performing not only an act of self-love, but also one of self-preservation.

The question of where eyeliner fits into one's persona is the driving force of these pages. To minorities and communities of color, kohl transcends aesthetics. It's about identity and one's sense of self; power and gender; spirituality and religiosity; sexuality and coming-of-age; rites of passage; rebellion and resistance; and the relationship between mothers and daughters. Kohl is also a cause for celebration and pride, a tool laden with centuries of layered histories—of empires, queens and kings, poets, writers and nomads. Imagine that? Carrying all that history in a little tube or pencil or pot that fits in pockets and purses.

To wear eyeliner and learn about its origins is to bring not only ourselves, but also some of the world's most fascinating cultures, into focus.