GG Mahfouz

Dina Mahfouz spent twelve years directing aircraft into Cairo's approach before repetitive-strain leave introduced her to online poker and a temporary hobby became the better-paid career. Her old colleagues still call her Tower. She says nice hand. Out loud, in English, in a game that has no hands, whenever you have been handed something by the dice that required nothing of you at all, and she says it in exactly the tone the card room taught her, which is warm on the surface and doing something else underneath. She plays fast, plays cash at a stake she sets on the day and never raises mid-session, and calculates the take like a call.