Of Mothers and Love

“She’s just your normal, overprotective, overbeating, over-the-top mother.”

I’ve just finished watching a movie called Because I Said So, where Diane Keaton, who is just gorgeous and I completely adore, meddles in her daughter’s (Mandy Moore) personal/love life. And while my mother does not directly meddle in my love life, except pointing out the many inadequacies of my ex-fiancé, the decision of the break-up was solely mine. Of course, the decision of the engagement itself was not. Let’s not forget the every morning scenario of why I am not getting married has become, well, an every morning scenario.

In the movie, from the very beginning, the mother is trying to push her daughter into relationships, telling her not to laugh her nervous laughter because it scares away the men, and pushing her to wear dresses that aren’t really the daughter’s style, but the mother’s. Now the daughter is an accomplished chef with her own catering business. She got the expensive loft and the car and the career, but not the guy, which concerns her mother so much because she doesn’t want her to end up alone, like her. Admirable sentiment that I’m sure all mothers relate to, what she doesn’t know however, or refuses to listen to, is how by her constant nagging and “suggestions” she is ruining an important part of her daughter; her confidence in being herself. Even though she may suggest at her daughter to wear a pleated skirt to impress her boyfriend’s conservative parents, and even though the daughter screams at her mother that she hates pleated skirts, she wears it all the same. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, the daughter mentions that her mother has impeccable taste. I agree, after all it IS Diane Keaton, but I wondered if what she was really saying was I feel more comfortable with my mother’s choices because I trust her taste more than I trust my own?
I wonder how many of us daughters relate, and how many of you mothers relate as well? For me, I feel like I am fighting a daily battle with myself as well as with my mother. Her suggestions to me feel more like orders because they are always accompanied with some sort of put down, like how my dress doesn’t fit anymore because I am letting myself eat too much, or how because I am a bit tight for money this month is because of my horrible financial management. So I end up listening to her advice or suggestions or whatever orders put into a subtle tone of “I suggest you do this, because see what happens when you don’t? You do all the wrong things” while feeling horrible about myself, with no confidence in my own choices or my own way of thinking. Looking for validation elsewhere, it is easier to stay at work where I have got good control of what I do and the people around me are confident in my decisions rather than go home and explain to my mother how I like my new shoes even though she doesn’t (which is the fight with her), and how when I do buy those shoes I should consider less what she would think of them (which is my fight with myself) and trust my own taste.
It is better to screw up our decisions now, our love lives, our finances, our styles, until we find that sweet spot where it is okay, really okay, to be ourselves. Even though my mother used her suggestion/put down methods on my ex while we were engaged, but because I wasn’t really telling her anything about how the relationship was progressing, they were focused only on the material shortfalls, which I always believed, and still believe, settle themselves. The emotional/personal shortfalls I had to figure out for myself, and decide upon for myself. It wasn’t until after the breakup that she, again, used her technique to “suggest” that in the future, I tell her how things are going because her experience would help me see the red signs. My mother does have impeccable taste, and my taste is quite sloppy and totally different, although I’d like to think I have a shabby chic thing going on from time to time. The thing is there are things that I know she is right about, and they’re probably a lot, and other things are, while right, that are greatly exaggerated. I guess what she needs to do is realize that I am not completely blind, and that while her opinion is indeed precious, it does not have to come with a constant lacking feeling.
Maybe all that love mothers have for daughters, and all that fear for their safety just needs to be polished with a little faith in us. It’s time for us to lead our lives, not follow theirs.

Technorati Tags: Mother,love,daughter,woman,relationship

Ruptured – The Good, The Bad, and The Egyptian

My very good friend Tarek Refaat is the first and only person I know directly that has written and published a novel, and it was IN ENGLISH! First of all, I am incredibly proud of his achievement. It is rare to have someone actually follow their dream and realize it, even if it may not be all that he, or I, expected. Before I start this review of his book; Ruptured, I would like to point out that he has done an amazing effort it trying to make this product the best that it can be. In addition, his amazing networking and people skills have helped him market the book, maybe in the virtual world more than around the country, but to have 4.5 stars on Amazon (not one of the reviewers being Egyptian, which is a shame) and quite a few reviewers on goodreads as well, this is where I stop and say WOW, and WAY TO GO!
Ruptured is about a rape victim, Farida, her story after the actual rape is done with the rapist doing his time behind bars, and how she moves on with her life; something Tarek has often wondered about because no one really tells you how it goes in books or movies. Unlike what we may expect, it’s not a happily ever after, even if the author has given it a happy ending. The book was written before the revolution in 2009, and was published way before the systematic rapes that have been going on in the country lately as a sociopolitical side effect, precisely in May 2011. A daring topic in a society like ours, and that is precisely the point of the book; how our gallant and compassionate Egyptian society treats raped women. As a side note, when you read the book, which I hope you do, you can generalize the idea with how our gallant and compassionate Egyptian society treats divorced women, women who have gone through abusive marriages, and what we call “3anes” or the spinsters (which can start for girls as early as 23 in some places in Egypt); damaged goods. Not only that, but it also tackles something very important in the human psyche; the predator that comes out in some people as they circle their emotionally impaired prey. Unfortunately, he does that a bit theatrically in a mix between Indian and old Egyptian movie plots, but hey, he gets the point through!

I will come out and say that the book isn’t really my type. I’m a Stephen King/Neil Gaiman kind of girl and drama stuff just doesn’t do it for me. Not to mention, I like artsy writing, and this book doesn’t have much of that. What it does have is some really touching stuff, and that is because it is honest. For a man who has never met a rape victim in his life to write so honestly about that particular sensitive topic, I can only give a standing ovation. Some parts of the book are really moving, making me tear up a bit (but just a little, don’t get the wrong idea), and some parts made me laugh out loud because they were so very Egyptian and so amazing to be seen described in English (think English dubbed Saneya Terter, that is if you’re into classic Arabic movies). But generally, the old Egyptian Indian movie plot thing ruined it for me. The story may lack a lot of “thickness” in the plot but talking to the writer, it was never his intention to have a thick plot. His intention has always been to portray how society deals with rape and rape victims. In that, he has succeeded with flying colors. The characters vary from very real to very fairytale-ish; you get your evil witch and prince charming all in one book! The damsel in distress, Farida, carries more depth than that, Thank God. The book is quite short, reads smoothly, and for an originally French schooled guy who works in IT and has to deal with more acronyms than actual words, Tarek and his editor Emily Richardson did a good job with grammar and style, although I would have preferred better sentence structure and more richness to the writing. I don’t believe in star rating books because I am a strong believer that life is too short to read bad books. I finished this one, it wasn’t a waste of my time, and since I have been so evil in describing it, I’d say I give it a steady 3 out of 5. For a first attempt novel, with a reviewer who finds bugs in software for a living, does not give out compliments, and is a reading addict, that is a damn good score!
So here we have a writer who has decided to go into the daring and quite scary world of book publishing in a language that is not native to his country about a topic that throws huge shadows over our society and culture. Man, that’s just brave!

Technorati Tags: Book review,Tarek Refaat,Amazon,Goodreads,Rape,victim,Egypt,Novel,Fiction

Blogging about Blogging

It's not strange you know, to blog about blogging. It's perfectly natural. It is so natural in fact that there are entire blogs, websites, and businesses dedicated to blogging and how to do it right. For me, I don't think they've ever been much help, but that doesn’t mean I'm not going to talk about it too.

The reason I AM talking about it is because it is an important part of my life. In addition, some of the articles on my blogs are important to some of my friends. Maybe they're flattering me, but they'd be REALLY overdoing it if they were. Don't worry, this is probably the last time I'd be blowing my own horn in this blog post, but no promises.

I wrote a paper on digital content in Egypt for a course during my masters degree, the one I never completed, back in 2009, way before activism was so well known in the mainstream. A nice chunk of that paper was about blogging, especially the Egyptian blogosphere, you can read it here, or you can skip to the next part if you like, dear reader.

On a more personal tone, when I started blogging, I thought I’d be a famous blogger, because I was a good writer after all, wasn’t i? That is not the case, thank God! Most famous bloggers are either activists or people who make a business out of it. I’m neither. I just write because I like to write, post because I like getting praised, and really hate it when a blog goes unnoticed or if I get a bad review, and occasionally find a friend sharing a blog post of mine with his friends through a third friend who doesn’t even know me and they don’t even know I’m the author. It actually happened twice, TWICE! Finally, I guess the purpose of me blogging is maybe somewhere words can help, which is something I believe in since I practically live inside the books I read. I write about my friends and make them teary eyed and speechless. I write about my quite insignificant life and my totally quirky views on it, as if my opinion is the only one that matters in the world. Guess what, on my blog, it really is the only opinion that matters in the world.

Even though I’m mostly active on one blog, this one, The Blue Column (I like to pretend I’m a columnist in a hotshot newspaper or magazine), I got two more blogs. My first was a blog about testing. I started it because I used to get into so many debates with my boss and I thought if I share my thoughts on testing and pass them on to the world, it won’t really matter if we have long debates, I still would have said what I wanted to say to the world. I wrote a couple of posts and they were successful, I got good feedback and it had one of the posts that I caught a friend sharing it with another friend of his without them knowing it was mine. Then, I lost interest in testing altogether or at least in writing about it. I guess I wasn’t having as many healthy debates about testing that would inspire me enough to keep doing it.

The second was a quasi-religious blog where I decided to document a bit of my spiritual thoughts. It is easier to be religious when you write about how you feel, again, for me at least. I kept thinking that maybe someone somewhere out there was going through feelings similar to what I was going through on the spiritual level and would benefit from reading my own experience. It isn’t informative, not really, and I got a lot of negative comments about it; one was “bateekhy” which typically means that it was absurd and made up; plain nonsense. But I also got positive feedback which kept me going for a while, but it was very difficult to write about religion, because it’s so sacred and so beautiful and I really am not a scholar, and I didn’t want to feel like a fake. So even though I haven’t abandoned it altogether, I write there scarcely.

The blue column was the last blog I created, it was the hardest to initiate because it is basically me; total exposure. But I am loyal to it because it gives me peace. Sometimes I write for the sake of posting anything, I can go a whole month without posting, and sometimes I post up to seven posts a month. I think the best moment of my blog life was when one of my friends called me up and told me, “Why haven’t you written anything lately? I really need to read your stuff because it makes me feel good.” My good happy blogging days are probably behind me (I was going through a hippie phase that didn’t really last long) but I do write from the heart, even if I am writing about boring old software testing, and if just one piece of writing touched someone, I am content in making a tiny microscopic dent in the universe after all.

So aside from the praise, do you want to hear why it really matters that I blog? On Saturday, September 1^st, 2012, I posted my first short story in a long long time: Of Lady Moon and Master Sea. It was a compiled version of 4 tiny chapters that I posted on facebook earlier that week and got great feedback on. A little while before that, a friend of mine told me I wasn’t an artist, and I am not ashamed to say “IN YOUR FACE!” On Sunday, November 4^th, 2012, I posted my second short story’ Pygmalion’s Statue. Inspired by a very close friend and even posted on a writing forum with not so bad feedback. On Friday, November 9^th, 2012, I wrote one of my strongest pieces: 8 portraits of Longing. Not the easiest to write or post, but definitely the bravest. The point is; blogging has helped this scared little girl open up a few doors and face herself. Doors she has believed to have long been locked and forgotten in the back of her head, and maybe remembered that she had talent after all. Writing this post, right here, right now, as reminded that scared little girl of what really matters, and that is, no matter who says what, and no matter what she faces in her real life, she will always have a life here that is completely hers, and that is not controlled by anyone else.

I am giving out a big thank you to all of you who are reading this now, to all of you who have ever read any of my stuff, and to every single one who gave me good or bad feedback (at least you cared enough to give feedback and if it was bad, it got my stubborn side to kick me in the tushy and prove to them that I am better than what they perceive, and that maybe they need to look a little closer before they judge).

I am braver because of you.

Technorati Tags: blogging,stories,personal,exposure,life,alive

The Egyptian Blogosphere back in 2009

I found this paper I had written for a Masters course before I abandoned it. It was about Egyptian Digital Content and it was back in 2009. The next part is an excerpt of it relating to the Egyptian Blogosphere. It was written back in 2009 and I thought maybe someone somewhere would find it interesting.

According to a study published by the Middle East Centre, University of Oxford, the Egyptian blogging era started around 2003 with a few bloggers who were “experimenting” with the idea. Before 2005, there was about 40 Egyptian blogs in total. In the following year, the political incidents arising in the country; the amendments in the constitution and the first presidential elections under the new laws) and in the middle east in general; the war on Iraq, has led the Egyptian activists, now speaking out, to go to blogging to get their voices heard. Kifaya movement and human rights activists were starting to gain international exposure, shortly followed by the Muslim Brotherhood who, by the end of 2006, have gained considerable attention. The diversification and fragmentation phase could be noticed by the end of 2006. The Egyptian blogosphere started to contain segments of bloggers with specific directions; leftists, copts, muslim brotherhood, cultural and poetic bloggers, personal bloggers, social commentators, even Bahai and homosexual divisions.

The starting Egyptian blogs were one of two types. The first would be technical blogs, introduced to IT people through their interaction with the internet. This makes sense since blogs now are considered to be a source of technical support to anyone who needs it. An open source technical tool called WatiN practically does not have any documentation other than what WatiN users are blogging about it. The second type of blogs belonged to leftists, urged by the Iraqi blogs about the war, describing the situation, then, in Iraq. Most of these beginning blogs were in English; directed to an international audience in addition to friends. The minority of Arabic blogs are meant to go out to fellow Egyptians, as the Arabic bloggers say, in addition to them being more comfortable blogging in their mother tongue.

By 2005, there were 400 blogs as estimated by experts, and by 2006 there were three times as many blogs. At that time, the Egyptian voice of citizen journalism has begun to mature, forming a personal, opinion based source of insight into Egypt’s political and social status.

By 2006, now that blogging has gained huge momentum across the country, Egyptian internet users were beginning to blog about everything there is to blog about. With the former activists giving way to some freedom of press and speech despite the arrests of several bloggers, allowing topics that were once (and still are) taboo in the Egyptian society like sexuality and religions such as Baha’ism, and their Egyptian practitioners to speak out and communicate.

To sum up, the Egyptian blogosphere consists of techies, activists, leftists, and other distinct groups sharing similar interests or promoting their own ideas. There are also the occasional personal blogs, online diaries, cultural blogs and some pure nonsense. With the arrest of activist bloggers and even facebook activists who promoted the 6th of April strike, internet based citizen journalism is facing the same difficulties as any other form of journalism in Egypt, leaving room on the internet for shallower topics like the latest album release of a singer, or which celebrity got a nose job. Maybe blog publishing systems such as Blogspot or Blogger should start working on providing higher security measures for the tracking of bloggers to keep them anonymous. Or bloggers should have the awareness to use anonymous proxies to access their blogs and use fake names and identification techniques.

 

Conclusion

Egypt has a considerable amount of digital content online. Ranging from government based content to corporate websites to a force to be reckoned with blogosphere. The question is how well is it advertised, utilized, and brought out to the world. Egyptian internet users are not interested in using the internet as a vast learning realm as much as they use it to get the latest on football and singers, and maybe as a really big newspaper. What is the point of the government’s huge Arabic content repository if no one accesses it? What point is it if they do not rank on Google search results? How will the people, Egyptians or other, know that it even exists?! If a portal like Luxor portal, meant to show the world what Luxor is all about and to help the tourism industry, is only advertised on a website related to the Egyptian government where probable tourists will most likely never go online, then how will it serve its purpose?!

However, not everything related to the Egyptian content is related to the Egyptian government; organizations such as the ones owning Masrawy should also act to increase the proper use of the internet in Egypt. Although something like Barmagi.net, a blog publishing system created and maintained by LinkdotNet, directed to create and support the IT technical community in Egypt, would be considered a giant leap in the direction of creating and utilizing constructive content, there is still so much to be done with the Egyptian digital content to help all Egyptian internet users and increase them as well. From web applications designed for children to online college workspaces, the Egyptian digital content is rather poor compared to other countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

On the bright side, the blogosphere in Egypt could actually be a force to be reckoned with. Political entities such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya have used the blogs successfully. Shouldn’t there be other trend setters out there directing the blogs to more rewarding topics?

In my opinion, digital content should be treated like any other industry. It requires marketing, sales, finances, human resources, and well-set system to be able to harvest its amazing potential.

Technorati Tags: Blog,Blogosphere,egypt,2009,politics,activism,digital content,Luxor,Linkdotnet

I’m Crazy (1) Theory of Islands

I'm crazy. It's a fact not a prop, if you know me personally, there's a 90% chance you said to me in the face and a 99% chance (the statistics guy tells us there is no 100%) you've thought it.
I don't mind, but if you are wondering why, other than my obvious eccentricities, this is to give you a bit of a clue. I'm giving you a tour of one of the rooms inside my head. You are therefore, of course, privileged.
I used to have an identity crisis. I felt like I didn't know who I was, what I was, what made me who I am, and what made me tick. I used to get upset without knowing why, and happy without knowing why either, and claim they are just mood swings. Now, I know who I am, and I know where my feelings are coming from, even the ups and downs. Again, just for the sake of the statistics guy, let's say I am fairly sure, and when I'm not, I have a pretty good idea where it may be coming from. How I came to know that is through a lot of reading, a lot of diving into my own psyche (no wonder I'm crazy, right?), and going through a lot of shit, excuse my French, which is by the accounts of so many people, A LOT OF SHIT!
So here I am. Ready? GO!
Let us assume that all these bits and pieces that are me are called La Fille En Blue Island. Now, this island has a lot of islands surrounding it, and all those islands including little old La Fille En Blue are connected with bridges. However, these islands are not really islands in the normal sense, they are more like cubes or prisms or any other 3 dimensional shape you like that is NOT a sphere or a cylinder, which means they must have edges. Each bridge is connected to only 1 side of this island. So if I am standing here on my island and I am looking at island A, I see only 1 side (I can't even see that there are edges). This side, to me, is everything about the island. Now, La Fille En Blue engineers are really really bad at building bridges, so the bridges are really really dangerous to cross, however, the citizens of La Fille En Blue are okay sometimes with traveling to other islands (the ones they can only see 1 side of).
When they do, they discover this great catwalk that goes all around the island and they decide to walk it first because the doors to the inside of the island are all booby trapped and it would be too dangerous to try and open any of these doors just yet. When they start walking, they discover the other sides, each one with a totally different image than the one before, and no 2 sides to this shape are identical. So if we assume a citizen of island La Fille En Blue moved to island A, and walked around the corner of the island, they would no longer see what island A really looks like, they would see what island A looks like to island B. They walked around the next corner and they saw another totally different side of island A, and so on. If the brave citizen who travelled across the dangerous bridge and accepted all the sides of island A finally decided to open one of the doors to the inside of the island, risk the traps, and go inside, by this time having the notion that what is on the inside of island A is probably totally different that what is on the outside, but doing it anyway, then this citizen of La Fille En Blue will get hurt and suffer, because the inside is always (almost always for the statistics guy) ugly, and the inside of island A or B or any other island out there is no place for citizens of other islands.

Here we come to the conclusion that the problem is not with me in any way, or my island for that matter, it is in fact with you! I have come to an agreement with the ins and outs of my island, and I am willing to walk the rickety bridges to get to your island. If you believe you can handle mine, then it’s your turn to try.
Finally, I would like to say 2 things:
A. If you have understood the above, then you understand that I am indeed crazy.
B. if you haven't, then only a crazy person would think the way I do, and so I am, indeed, crazy.

Technorati Tags: Crazy,Island,Psyche,people,relationship,friendship,communication,bridge,lunatic,insane,alone

Blaze of Glory– Not Settling

Here’s the thing, I’m not settling!

Political or otherwise, I am NOT settling!

I always keep getting this comment, “you’re young!”

Why, yes, I am, and I don’t intend to have hypertension at 24 or 26 or even at 30. Life is short, I won’t be “young” forever, so why is it are “older” people so willing to give up on all that is better for the sake of whatever is offered, and trying to pass it on as wisdom in the sense of “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” especially if that bird in the hand is a sickly thing that hardly sings and the simply having it makes me give up on the birds in the bushes, or at least makes me too lazy because, after all, I’ve settled for the ugly bird in my hand.

By the way, I’m all for freedom of birds. I just do not understand how we seem to handle the series of disappointments everywhere. In politics, people are settling for a poor excuse of a constitution to avoid too much conflict. They’re agreeing to meetings and negotiations with a terrorist government that kills, humiliates, and mutilates citizens, in addition to violating every law or simple humanitarian rule the world has ever known; from traffic to rapes to mass murders. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why avoid conflict instead of transforming it to constructive tangible results that take us to diversity and growth? Why should we submit to the dictatorship of the majority, or even the dictatorship of the minority? WHY?!!! It’s not about giving second chances and time; these things are granted when:

a) an honest intent for change is touched,

b) action is taken in that direction,

c) mistakes are made, and

d) there are attempts to fix them.

Again, it’s not just politics; it’s a way of life. At work, in the current economy and with the scarcity of job opportunities, companies are telling their employees to thank God they have a job in the first place, to take their escalations where the sun doesn’t shine, and that they are welcome to leave if they don’t like the treatment… maltreatment is more like it! Basically, stay miserable and if you don’t settle, then we’d be happy to not pay you. So, with all due respect, I will try to find the job that satisfies me with the environment that makes me feel comfortable; and if I can’t find it outside, I’ll make it inside, even if I have to force it. There is no settling when it comes to the right thing; it has to FEEL right, no matter how hard it is to achieve, or else it is simply not enough.

I don’t think I need to highlight the people that get married and settle for “the ok guy” or the “good girl” because society tells them that there is something wrong with them if they don’t get married at a certain age, and other nonsensical cultural rules. Nor do I need to highlight how parents pressure us to settle for the “safe” roads in life instead of taking the risk of doing what we want or what we’re comfortable with, what makes us content. It’s all the same message: settle for a safe and secure life.

The result of all that is simple: I, you, they, we will settle for what we are not worth, will settle for what is less than the best, will settle for less than OUR best!

Not anymore!

As the great and eminent Bon Jovi says “I’m going down in a blaze of glory”

Bon Jovi - Blaze of Glory

Technorati Tags: Settle,Egypt,Revolution,Constitution,Government,Culture,Work,Crisis,Economy

F*cked

I was discussing a movie with a friend. It’s called Ruby Sparks(a must watch by the way), and according to my very brief one-liner on the plot, my friend said that he, the main character, was f*cked.

As a rule, all movie and book characters are in fact f*cked. If they weren’t on the inside, the world was definitely doing it for them. That’s what all fiction is about, isn’t it? And since art imitates reality, the insightful thought of the day is that we are all f*cked!

I’m sorry, are you offended? If you are, then please, by all means, stop reading this obscene and pretentious piece of writing, done by a f*cked person who is stereotyping the world. But first let me ask you something, and I do ask of you, dear reader, to keep an open mind. Do you know anyone, anyone at all, who is not f*cked?

I don’t. Everyone I know is f*cked, everyone I’ve ever known is f*cked. F*cked is the new norm. F*cked is the new black. Even those people who have no depth to them and seem to live a 2D life that satisfies only the very basic needs of survival are f*cked in their own shallow insignificant way.

Isn’t f*cked what we look for in a relationship? Every girl is looking to save a man from his wayward self and every guy looking to be the hero who saves the damsel in distress or the princess that’s locked up in her ivory tower. That is f*cked up in its own special twisted way! But we’re not here to discuss individual ideas but more the entirety of the situation of people in the world. Actually, we’re not here to even do that, we’re here to note an observation.

We’re all f*cked at work, no one does what they want because the corporate takes over, and the basic needs, and the money, and the family, and even the traffic.

We’re f*cked at home because people aren’t perfect and we're always expecting them to meet unrealistic expectations. We’re f*cked in relationships because all women want men to read their minds and all men want women to leave them alone.

So now that we’ve established the fact of how everyone is so messed up… I mean f*cked! It can’t be a bad thing really. It should be a motive for us to accept the fact and move on, live our lives with the knowledge of how f*cked we are, and simply be at peace with ourselves and the world.

Bye now.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

Warning! This is not about the movie, much as I am sure Megan Fox's see-through dress and sexy underwear would be such an interesting topic. This is my own guide on how to lose friends and alienate people: proven to be effective by yours truly.
I am not a trusting person. I know a lot of people but I have few friends. I don't usually warm up to people, and I think people who warm up to me are just plain freaky! Yes, that would be you, you, and you... Freaks! People call me crazy, and I am sure a shrink would agree; with all those people pushing me to see one, I'm sure they're not just saying that either. Finally, I am an expert at trusting the wrong people – when I do finally get to trust them – and beating myself up with a huge stick afterwards, but I just usually prefer to bang my head against the wall.
I am also very very good at – this is the good part – losing friends and alienating people. I am writing this to remind myself of all the friends I've lost, people I've alienated, and last but not least, my ingenious methods of doing so.
1. Be clingy, needy, and annoying.
2. Be confrontational, honest, blunt, and downright insensitive.
3. Let other people, such as my unfortunate ex-fiancé (unfortunate because I do pray over and over that he gets hit by a bus and dies a most gruesome ugly painful death, and I think one of those prayers may just get through, who knows) poison my ideas of my friends, take up the time that should have been theirs, judge them, talk about them behind their backs and find a listening ear, and tell me how to deal with them, which usually sucks.
4. Stop listening to their advice, doubt their every word, and assume they are out to get me; just pure paranoid behavior in short.
5. Not be there when they need me.
6. Trust them with secrets (not always a good idea) and find them untrustworthy; you're bound to meet some bad eggs, so secrets are just for me and myself.
7. Make mistakes and not apologize; call it pride, arrogance, denial, or hope they wouldn't notice… it comes down to the same result in the end.
8. Be arrogant and proud in general.
9. Show obvious favoritism.
10. Criticize them a lot.
11. Push them away for no reason at all.
12. Assume stuff about them and believe those assumptions without questioning.
13. Not trust my gut when something seems so horribly wrong.
14. Not tell them how I feel when something is wrong, in a non-confrontational, blunt way.
15. Attempt to self-destruct, do wrong things, be a jerk, or all the above (they usually work so well together).
Dear reader, you do not have to do all the above, one or two would suffice, although you may have to do more in case they are particularly keen on your friendship. It even works with the best friends, the oldest friends, and the ones that don't take hints. But, you must know which methods work best with which people to have a nice clean sweep.
Good luck with all the people you would lose, hope it works out for you, or if you don't want to lose people, just don't do any of the above and you're probably good to go.

Not old, just older

We live, we learn. I seem to discover something new every year that just wasn’t there the year before. At 24, I thought my life would end at 25 and wanted to be able to do everything, sort of like a new year’s resolution. At 25, I was sure I was going to grow old and do nothing with my life. At 26, today marking the first day of it, I shall bestow upon thou my wisdom (just kidding, I’ll just say some stuff that will negate my convictions for the past 2 years.)
In the past year, my achievements amounted to a big fat ZERO! Work wise, I only got more lost, not even slightly sure if what I’m doing is what I want to do. I sort of got over the first accident only to crash my new car and get into a new one with more problems and more casualties. As for the family side, it’s not exactly showing its pretty side, mostly because I’m not performing up to par with them, and they have to suffer through all my problems right along with me. So I spent most of the year, up until very very recently, thinking that this is how my life will be like; I’m already stuck at a job I don’t like, I have huge money management issues, I’m usually getting into trouble not getting out of it, and my new attempts to try and see a bit of the world resulted in a total disaster (plan A was to go to Italy failed when I started legal issues, and then plan B of going to see my friend in the UK left me in disaster while finally, plan C which was due to be early January to go visit my family in the US ended with a personal financial crisis, not to mention when I almost tried to go on a hike in Sinai, it broke out into what seems like street wars, rendering it unsafe in the eyes of my family and so many other people). So here I was, stuck, stuck, stuck, and stuck! And I don’t think it was going to be for just the blessed year of 2012.
My expectation was that I would probably be living that same exact life with the same exact parameters for the next 5 to 10 years. Career advancements would have to be through management; a track I do not fancy. The dream of getting out from under the umbrella of cultural and family restrictions would only be achieved if I got married, a prospect I don’t fancy either, and that is based on what my married friends think of marriage by the way. Not to mention, I will probably get into more trouble; some people are just like that, you know! So now that I have just turned 26, I should probably just roll over and die, right? Wrong! It turns out that maybe life has some chances after all.
I don’t know when exactly I got this realization, but I was going about the whole age vs. achievement thing all wrong. It’s true, I was and still am trying to break the routine of life, but that is the thing, there is no breaking it. My life has not ended at 25 and will not end at 26, it won’t even end at 36 either. There is no such thing as getting old for something, except maybe bearing children but I still got plenty of time for that I guess. I don’t have to rush through my life, I just have to live it enjoyably. I will probably change my career at some point in the future, and I would preferable to change it in the near future, but I still haven’t explored my career enough yet. I do believe there are chances out there, and no, I’m not too old to go back to coding or to learn a couple of new tools. I won’t be too old to learn new tools 3 years from now either. I will not be too old to be a junior at some other track at 30. I will not be too old to learn to bake or ride a bike. I will not be old to travel and see the world. I will not be too old to publish a book or open up my own bookstore some day. I will not be too old to break the routine because the routine is there for as long as I want it to be there.
The world does not end today ladies and gentlemen, it is still way too early to tell. I’ll do what I need to do when I’m ready to do it. Most importantly, today I let go of so many balls and chains from the past. Today, I will make up new dreams and live the first day of the rest of my life trying to make them come true, only I don’t have a deadline to keep, I’ll take my time and live, not race.

Scar

It's just a scar. We all get scars. It used to hurt a lot at first, when the wound was still fresh. You take care of it as well as you can, and you bear up with the pain and the infections. Sometimes the painkillers work, sometimes they don't. Little by little, the pain turns into a throb, and then it's almost not there. Sure, sometimes you bump it into the occasional desk or chair and the pain comes rushing back; fresh, potent. You grind your teeth and stifle a little scream, or you just let it out, grateful for the relief if no one is around. Sometimes the memories of how the scar came to be there in the first place take over your mind, always an uninvited guest. Maybe you'll relive the moment or you'll brood on the what-ifs for the rest of the day. Maybe you will sit down and cry, all the energy sucked out of you by some invisible force. Or maybe you'll let it go. By time, you won't let that uninvited guest in, or he will just stop calling. At the end of the day, it's still just a scar. It might fade away into nothing, or it might be with you till you die. One day, when you're old and wrinkled, someone might ask you how you came about that ugly - or not so ugly - scar, and at that moment you will probably remember, but let's hope you don't.

8 portraits of Longing

“I miss you,” I said.
“I miss me too, Don,” he answered.
I knew what he meant, all too well. I wasn’t sure which of us was lost, him or me. Or was it the rest of the world? You live, you work you die. You meet people that suck all your dreams out of you, or you make up your own dreams that the universe seems so adamant on making impossible. He was right there, and I missed him because he wasn’t there at all, and neither was I.

***

He’s been dead for 15 years now. I miss him every single day, God rest his soul. Sometimes, I imagine he’s right there, and I would talk to him, tell him everything, and he’d listen quietly and patiently. I’d always know the answer just talking to him, or his ghost – that’s what I like to call him when he’s a figment of my imagination. Most of all, I just miss his hug. Having spent my entire childhood hugging him or making sure I stayed close enough to hug him, the fact that one night, out of the blue, he was gone never really sunk in. Sometimes, I’d be glad he wasn’t there because then he’d be disappointed, and I wouldn’t want him to be disappointed in me. But it didn’t really matter, he is always there, and a figment of my imagination he will always be.

***

It isn’t easy to be just the two of us. It was actually quite sad sometimes. It’s true that he visits all the time, calls all the time, and remains as annoying as ever, but he just isn’t there which makes it all wrong. But then, I know he’s happier, which makes it all right. I’m not selfish, at least I hope I’m not, but I hate how sometimes some things remain unspoken. I could not ask for more, but I just miss him.

***

I don’t miss him, not one second, not the bad, not even the good. In fact, the thought of him makes me gag and want to throw up. I am still angry, I’m so so angry, and I don’t ever want to let go of that anger, that rage. I’m even angry at myself, and I don’t want to let that go either. I don’t miss him, not in the least. I just miss finishing work and instantly knowing who to call to tell about my day.
Calling him isn’t it, not even the call itself.
I just miss knowing.

***

“I really miss you, come on, come back :( ”
He picked the worst possible time to do his PhD abroad, the absolute worst possible time, when the whole world seemed to be saying goodbye to me, nicely and not so nicely. It’s been two years already, well, almost two years, and he hasn’t come back, not even for a brief holiday. I can’t really blame him, he’s got commitments, but I miss him. On my down days, I’d miss how he’d wake me up at 8 am to go for 4 hour long walks. I miss how he showed me my favorite place in Cairo, or how we’d spend the whole day together just talking and talking and talking. I miss how he’d corner me into making a decision, he still does that on skype, but it just isn’t the same. But he’s coming back for a vacation finally! It will be a month that I plan not waste. But then he’ll travel again…
And I’ll miss him again.

***

It’s my favorite city in the whole wide world, always has been, and probably always will be. There is something about walking along that particular beach, looking at that particular part of the sea, getting lost, walking in the rain, sitting at that café, just being there that mends the heart. Everything fades away there, even the people. I think I might have been an Alexandrian in another life. How else could a place I see a few days a year mean that much to me, give me so much peace? I miss Alexandria. I will forever miss Alexandria… It’s where my heart belongs.

***

We sat around laughing at each other, making jokes, telling funny stories. It’s been so long, too long, since she smiled so much. Doesn’t she just have the most radiant smile in the world? It’s a smile you look at and you know that once upon a time this woman was in love, was alive, and was happy, but she’s not anymore. I hardly have any memories of us playing together when I was a child. The playing was my dad’s area of expertise; she had to be the bad guy. But when she smiles and when we laugh, I remember bits and pieces, not so many, nothing major, but I remember the amount of love that just flowed from her, and I remember her back when she was happy. I’d always feel a touch of sadness whenever I make her smile, because I know it wouldn’t last, and I know how much I’m going to miss the smiling version of her.

***

Up until lately, I’ve had an easy life, and considering all the help and support I get from friends and family, I can fairly say that I still have an easy life, thank God for that. But there were times when life was easier, clearer, when it made more sense and I had some idea of where I was going. I usually got there too, but it was never what I had expected when I did. The grass is never greener on the other side. That’s the thing; life changes, circumstances change, God knows how much I’ve changed. Do I miss it; the life I had once upon a time? Not really. Do I miss who I used to be, at a time when I didn’t even know how innocent I was? Sometimes. I just don’t miss who I was. I don’t want to lose what I’ve learned so far. Sometimes, I imagine if I were still the same person I was back then, but I’d always end up feeling incomplete. There are things I could have now that would only fit her, the ‘me’ from the past, and even though they would be nice to have now, I don’t really want them. I am who I am, and aren’t we the sum of our experiences? I’ll claim that I have been through a lot for a girl my age, and there are things I would take back, and there are other things I wish never have happened, but then I’d lose so much of me in the process, and I don’t want that. Dear 20 year old me, I miss you sometimes, but I’m glad you’re gone.

Image by Bishoy Beshara

Technorati Tags: missing,memories,nostalgia,melancholy,story,anecdote,freind,family,death,life,Alexanderia,love

15 Portraits of Despair–Number 14

This is an excerpt from “the sandman, endless nights” by neil gaiman

“She had waited until her husband and children were far away, and had driven into the snowy woods, and ended it. Just let it all go.

She had wanted the pain to stop. The heart-hurt. She slept her way into death, only waking when the Highway Patrol found her body.

She was cold, rigid, frozen, when they found her.

Someone like that, said the patrolwoman. You’d think she’d have everything to live for.

She tried to speak, to tell them that that was what made the pain unbearable but, like someone caught in a bad dream, she could not make herself heard. She screamed, and no sound came out. She watched as they took her body away.

She sat by the side of the road, in the snow, all bodiless and afraid, waiting for the happiness to start.”

Technorati Tags: Neil Gaiman,Sandman,Endless,Despair,Suicide,Excerpt,Story,death

Pygmalion’s Statue

He chiseled at me, piece by piece. Every day, he would come into my room, his workshop, and he would give me all his time, every single moment of it. I got his complete and utter attention. The day he made my eyes was the happiest day of my life. I could finally see him, my creator, my raison d’être, and he was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. He treated me delicately, brushing away any dust, paying attention to every detail, making me as perfect as could be. He chiseled at my hair, carved my body, my dress, my hands, every single digit of my fingers. I could see it in his eyes, his love, his devotion, all those hours he spent with me and only me. He loved me, more than anything in the world he loved me. He loved me ever since I was an idea in his head, an idea of unmatched beauty.

His caretaker came into my room every night when he was out relaxing at the pub. I wore him out, you see. She would clean the room, even dust me off sometimes. He never paid much attention to her, who would? She was a mess of a person. I wonder if all the living women looked like that; hairs tied in a bun and clothed in rags all the time, smelling of soap and garlic. If they were, it would explain why he would love me and only me. She would drop off his food in the middle of the day and he wouldn’t even turn to her, barely murmuring a thank you. Sometimes, she would bring him flowers with his food, a Jasmine or a Lily, He must love those. Before he made my eyes, another woman used to come in. she smelled of jasmine and lilies, the smell of the oils he used on me sometimes. He used to care for her, but I guess she had been no match for me after all. I was everything in his life, and she faded away.

One day, the caretaker woman came in to give him his food, and she called at him in a most irritating manner that he screamed at her, “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“That would mean I have to see you, and hear something other than your screams,” She replied.

Then she added, most insolently, that he was crazy to abandon the living for a statue. I could feel his anger, his hurt. He got rough with me that day, almost broke off a fold of my dress, but he finally gained control of his temper. That day, he kissed my hand before he went out, and from that day on, I kept wishing that he would do it again. I didn’t understand why he did not just let her go, that insolent girl.

That night, she came in to clean my room just as she always did. She was crying. He must have reprimanded her. Good! When she was done cleaning, she stood in front of me and stared at me. Such a pale creature, I never got to see her so closely before. She had such sadness in her eyes, it couldn’t have been just the reprimand, was my love violent? Did he hit her? No, it wasn’t that. The way she looked at me… she loved him! She was heartbroken, and she was jealous. Then her face changed and she picked up the chisel without taking her eyes off me. She screamed and screamed; angry, hurt, broken, and now she was going to break me. She was going to kill me, and he would die of grief. I could not not look at her, I could not not see the expression on her face, nor the look in her eyes. I wished I would see him one last time, but he was gone. The chisel flew at my hand, the one he kissed. The first thing she would destroy was the thing I cherished most. But the chisel never hit me!

A shattering sound came from behind me. She must have broken a window. She moved out of my sight, probably to clean it up. He mustn’t know of her attempt to destroy me, he would never forgive her. But she came back. She was holding what remained of a large mirror; a hundred pieces held together only by an ugly wooden frame. She put it right in front of me on the other side of the room. “Now he will see you shattered, just as he now sees me. He will see the cracks and creases. He will look at your perfection, then he will turn and see you as you should be, after time is done with you, broken!” and she left.

I had to stare at myself all night. I was turned into a monstrosity in that mirror, jagged pieces and rough edges. Even though I was still intact, it hurt to see myself like this, reduced to fragments. Was that really what I would become one day? No, he wouldn’t let me. But what if he dies? I mustn’t think about that. I stared at the reflections of my face. I really was quite beautiful, but then I never worked and I never cried. That caretaker would have looked a lot like me had she not been so careless with herself. If that swelling in her eyes went down, they would be a lot like mine. I don’t understand why she let herself become like that. What could possibly be so important as to let her forget to look beautiful? He would remove that mirror in the morning, and he would probably fire her, too.

What happened in the morning was not what I had expected. When Pygmalion came in and saw the mirror, it was as if he was struck by lightning. I wanted to scream at him that I was safe, that it was just a silly broken mirror. If only he would turn to me and see me intact, that would have made it all better. Instead, he sat down and cried, staring at the mirror, as if all that was left of me was that ugly reflection.

“Why did you leave me?” he sobbed.

“I didn’t, I am right here, just turn around”

“I swore I would always love you, and I never stopped. I was doing all this for you, slaving away at her, for you”

“What are you talking about? I love you, too. Who are you talking about?”

“She was my gift to you. The gift I swore I would give you. I promised you immortality, and you left me”

“I don’t understand, I am right here, my love”

“On our wedding night I promised I would love you forever, and that the whole world would wonder at your beauty. I promised that even though I would make a statue of you, it would still fade next to your glow”

“…”

“How could you say I didn’t love you anymore? Who was I doing all this for!” he screamed.

“…”

He sobbed all day and all night. The woman didn’t get him his food, nor did she call him. She didn’t come in to clean my room, I mean his workshop. The next morning he was asleep on the floor, crying in his sleep. Days and nights went by as I stood there gathering dust. He never touched me again, not with his hands, not with his lips, and not even with his chisel. He just cried in front of the broken mirror. It was never me he loved, it was always her. If he loved her so then why did he treat her so badly? Why did he show me all the love he should have shown her? Why did he kiss my idle hand while he could have kissed her hands that served him so well? I was nothing but an image of his love. I was just a statue. When my heart broke, it made a loud cracking sound that he never heard. It was broken so deep inside me that he never knew it was ever broken. Would he have cared if he knew? Probably not.

Ending 2

He never noticed when she slipped into the room. He didn’t move when she sat beside him, but he cried harder. The breeze that blew through the door had the scent of jasmine and lily spread across the room. He must have smelled it, that was why he cried harder. She took his hand in both of hers and kissed it, just as he had once kissed my hand.

“It was always just you,” he said quietly.

“I know,” she said, and ran her hand through his hair.

“Why did you leave me?”

“Because I love you”

“I was doing this all for you,” he looked at her in a way that made me realize that he never really loved me.

“I just wanted you back,” she smiled at him, and at that moment, I knew that I do fade next to her glow.

Technorati Tags: Story,Literature,Short Story,Fiction,Fantasy,Romance,Drama,Spin off,Galatea,Shaw

Faces & Sounds

I see you

I do

I see this face and I see that

I hear these words

I hear what’s in your heart

It is very loud

Did you know?

Each echo shrieks on its own

“trust me,” you say

“I love you,” you say

“we’re friends,” you say

“I am fake,” you also say but only I can hear

How do you live with a shattered soul?

How do you see, I wonder?

Does every face has its own set of eyes?

Do you have one set green and one set blue?

Do you know what you say deep down in what remains of your soul?

Pity, to be so old and so naïve, so evil and not even knowing

Do you recognize your own lies?

What rings true in that black heart of yours?

I hear you

I say all the right words and laugh at all the right parts

But I don’t lie

You are no friend

The world has enough poison for me

I have one face

One voice

One set of eyes

I know who I am

Your turn!

 

Technorati Tags: Poetry,hypocrisy,life

Drops of Sunlight

She opens her eyes. She must have been crying in her sleep; her eyelids are heavy and swollen. She doesn’t move off the bed, staying there perfectly still, looking at her night table with all the unread books, her desk with the stacks of papers, and the floor, which should be flooded by sunlight from her bedroom window, but is covered with shadows instead. Tiny drops of sunlight fall on the broken down wooden floor, escaping the intricate pattern of her curtain, but even those aren’t as bright as the sun outside. Drops of faded light are all they are.

She doesn’t want to go back to sleep. She doesn’t even want to close her eyes, but she isn’t getting up. Life has become such a chore, so similar to the broken down wooden floor, ruined from all her restless dragging of furniture around her room; her desperate attempts to make a change, an effort not even worthy of being a statement of anything. In a few minutes, she will start her day among the shadows, pretending that they don’t annoy her, pretending she is fine; a word she has grown to hate over time. She will say hello to people and smile, she will make jokes, she will eat when she’s hungry and drink when she’s thirsty, and indeed, she will be fine on every possible front. Between the smiles and the jokes and the food, and all the endless chores that add up to life, she will hope she runs into a drop of sunlight, not as bright as the sun outside, but brighter than the shadows, and she will hope it will last for more than just a passing moment. Maybe the drop of sunlight will be warm enough to melt some of the icy sorrow she keeps buried deep inside her heart, or bright enough to scare away her worries, her guilt, her disappointments, even if it only lasts long enough to give her a moment’s peace. Maybe she should even venture to hope that she would run into more than one drop of sunlight on this day.

She gets up, sitting at the edge of the bed, still staring at the drops of sunlight. She has nothing to look forward to, but there will always be a maybe. That will have to do for now.

Technorati Tags: Story,Light,Life,Day,Chore,Hope,Sorrow

Patience Is The Key To Relief

She walked into this small gallery in Zamalek, the gallery that her best friend took her to one day, the gallery that was full of all those authentically Egyptian knickknacks. It was a beautiful day on the winter before he went away for his PhD two years ago. They had walked all over Zamalek, had lunch in a small restaurant, all Zamalek restaurants are small which only adds to how adorable and cozy they really are, and they had talked about everything as they usually did. But that was two years ago. The second time she went into that gallery, it was last year, and it was to get a birthday present for her other best friend; a crazy man with a beard and a ponytail that never ceases to shock her on every occasion whether with how crazy he is, how utterly different from her he is, or simply, how he could be one of the sweetest most reliable people she has ever met. She owed him something special, and she knew just what to get.

As soon as she got in the door, she went for the small cardboard box on the floor near the cashier desk and knelt in front of it. She went through the black and white photographs, one by one, filtering the nicest ones out. She must have spent quite some time there, sifting through the photos of Egypt once upon a time when it was beautiful. It was a time she had only seen in old movies. Anyone know the scientific progress on time travel? They were photos of streets, shops, squares, the Nile, buildings that are still there in down town Cairo, and there were photos of people, Egyptians, smiling, poor, beautiful, and so so good. They don’t make them like that anymore.

She carefully selected five of the photos and gave them to the salesman while she looked around the shop. It had oriental style accessories, portraits of old Egyptian movie stars that will always be drop dead gorgeous, mugs, candles, bags and stuff made of cloth that could only be seen in Egypt, used to decorate walls and streets at times of festivities, and street signs! Big street signs, small street signs, refrigerator magnet street signs, some with names of prominent places like Tahrir Square, and others with Egyptian idioms, all gorgeous. One caught her eye, it said “Patience is the key to relief” in intricate Arabic calligraphy, and the English translation beneath it in a smaller font; the Egyptian version of “Patience is a virtue” which everyone knows oh so well. Wasn’t that what she needed? Some patience? Some virtue? Maybe she would indeed reach that state of relief, she just needed a reminder. And it was decided that on that day last year, she would buy 5 photos of 20^th century Egypt and refrigerator magnet that looked like a street sign. She went home.

She definitely was not going to put it on the fridge; it was green and the sign was blue, she had SOME taste in colors, even though it fails her sometimes. No, she put it on her whiteboard in her room, the one on the wall behind the door, the one she gets to look at only when the door is closed. At first, there was no place for it, with all the blog article ideas in blue, to do list items in black, goals in red, struck out sentences here, doodles there, and dreams of learning how to ride a bike and learn the cello, not to mention all the things she was going to study, and all the story ideas, and whatever else that pops into her head. She eventually found a place for it, under the dreams written sideways and between the daily to do list and work goals, it was a tiny space but it will do. It will remind her to be patient, to do it one step at a time.

She sits now, one year later, with her desk chair propped in front of the whiteboard, door closed, and stares at her whiteboard. She has erased the dreams, put them somewhere on her ipad. She has erased the work to do list, it had no place on her personal whiteboard, work is to be done at work, but as she stares at the picture she took of the refrigerator magnet she loves so much, the one with the dreams and the to do lists, she sees the shadow of the list of articles and stories that have been there last year, and are still there now, never stuck out, never erased, and will probably never be written now that she doesn’t remember what they were supposed to be about. But she won’t strike them off, and she won’t erase them, she won’t even put them on her ipad, not unless they are done, maybe a year later, maybe two years later, and who knows, maybe right now. She has been patient for a year, she loses her patience sometimes, and she snaps out at other times, it was a tough year, tougher than anything she’s ever been through, but then again she says that every year. She hasn’t found relief yet but who knows, maybe if she stays patient, she will find relief, one way or another.

Technorati Tags: instagram,friendship,photos,patience,egypt,art,lists,story,anecdote

I Am Angry

I am angry.

I’m angry at the traffic every single day. I try to put off my fits of road rage till as far ahead in the road as possible but I usually only last 10 minutes, not even out of Maadi. There is always the driver in between two lanes, or the one trying to overtake you, not to mention the slow slow slow movers who let every other car in the traffic jam take your place while you stay still for 15 minutes longer just because s/he’s the car ahead of you. There will always be the one coming from the far left to the far right that swears at you because you have to be the stupid one not to predict is glorious arrival, and it is indeed glorious with all the honks. And we mustn’t forget the ones that seem to flow into you from the side; they probably want to know how elastic your car can be against the large truck on your other side. I won’t even mention the pedestrians or the microbuses.

I’m angry at the country. Of course I’m angry at the country. I’m angry at how some people think that it’s ok to put people in jail because they may “seem” dangerous. I’m angry at people who hate the revolution because they’re too blind to see beyond it into the depth of the shit this country has sunk into. I’m angry at the revolution and everyone who took part in it because they let it die, and they let others die, and they gave up. I’m angry at every war, every famine, every sickness, every accident. I’m angry at every child sleeping on the streets because I can’t help him, and every old man begging in the street. I’m angry at every woman whose husband beats up. I’m angry at every man who condescends on other people.

I’m angry at how work is not satisfying me. I’m angry at how people think they’re doing the right thing while they’re messing everything up. I’m angry at people who don’t listen. I’m angry at people who make useless excuses. I’m angry at people who go out of their way to hurt other people. I’m angry at people who don’t apologize. I’m angry at people who are looking for ways to make you take the blame for World War II.

I’m angry at my family for being too scared and not giving me enough space. I’m angry at them for being too supportive sometimes when I feel like I don’t deserve their support. I’m angry at my friends for caring too much and I’m angry at them sometimes for caring too little.

I am especially angry at nosy people; the ones that come over to my desk and go through my stuff idly or ask me about how much I paid for my car, not to mention, where I’m going and where I’m coming from. I’m angry at the people that corner me with personal questions that I end up having no other way of answering except with the whole truth and nothing but the truth, despite me being an elaborate liar.

I’m angry at all those passing thoughts of the things my ex did to me. I’m even angrier at myself for letting him do them. I’m angry at being so naïve or trusting. I’m even angry at being mean to him sometimes, even if he deserved it.

I’m angry at everything I want and can’t have, about everything I wish I could do but doesn’t seem likely. I’m angry at every frustration, every disappointment. I’m angry at every dream I let go. I’m angry at everyone who told me to let go of my dreams. I’m angry at every story I haven’t written and every book I haven’t read.

I’m angry at being so stuck in this life that seems to have been set for me and fenced with electrocuted barbed wire. I’m angry at all the rules, and the comments, and society, and people. I’m angry at everyone who conforms to life as it is. I’m angry at the stale stagnant state we’re living in; the lack of change, and all the resistance to it. I’m angry at all the misconceptions, and all the falsehood. I’m angry at the lies that we make up and seem to believe.

Apparently, I’m angry at me for being born.

I’m angry all the time. It’s exhausting and scary sometimes and I think it’s affecting my health negatively; blood pressure and heart rate and stuff like that, so I should stop being angry, I just don’t know how. To me, being angry is being human. As a good friend always says, “it’s a savage world out there.” He couldn’t possibly be more right, he just missed how, since I’m always angry, I must be a savage too. Aren’t all savages angry?

P.S. I’m angry at how this post sounded better in my head.

Technorati Tags: angry,emotion,life,family,dream,hope,people,egypt,revolution,world

Things I Hate About Me

Before anything, this is not meant to drive sympathy or support or any of that, this is a personal observation of my own character. I don’t want any comments saying “Oh No, don’t say that about yourself” or “you don’t do xyz” simply because I live with myself more than anyone has lived with me, it’s a matter of self reflection.

If you don’t want to read this then don’t, if you don’t like it, it doesn’t matter. I say this with all the love and respect, but the purpose of this post is just to come to a certain truth with myself about myself, to be able to either fix the things I hate, live with them, or even learn to like them someday. I am not depressed or sad or anything, I’m just doing a long overdue spring cleaning of myself.

Without further ado, I hate:

1. Lying
2. Being moody
3. Making my mom angry
4. Getting angry in general
5. Losing tolerance
6. Trusting the wrong people
7. NOT trust the right people
8. Not being there for some people when they need me, sometimes because I don’t stand seeing them in pain, and sometimes because I am just not well enough to carry my friends’ and family’s burdens. In either case, I still hate it
9. Falling for the wrong guy... over, and over, and over again…
10. Quitting
11. Being so unconfident sometimes
12. Being blunt with words and hurting people; my words get 3D as one of my friends says
13. Not always standing up for myself when it’s due
14. Dodging blame
15. Saying the stupidest things sometimes (not just being blunt, I mean really stupid things)
16. Being such a coward
17. Being arrogant
18. Being materialistic
19. Being selfish
20. Being judgmental
21. Not listening to my heart
22. Not apologizing sometimes
23. Not reading the signs
24. When I get childish
25. When I try to act all mature and end up feeling really sucky on the inside
26. Pretending that I’m fine when I’m not
27. Not being able to make a decision in all the important stuff
28. Procrastinating
29. Not doing what I dream about doing
30. Letting other people put me down
31. Not listening to my heart

All in all, this took me around 15 minutes to write, Q.E.D. as we used to say in math.

Of Lady Moon and Master Sea

(1)

Lady Moon came closer to earth tonight. She was flirting with Master Sea. And even though she hid part of her face with the veil of night, she still gave him a shadow of a smile, as she listened to his reverent wooing in the crashing of the waves. She stayed close all night, wondering if her love was worth the destruction of the world, wondering if she was ever to unite with her lover, and wondering how far he would reach for her if she showed him her face and came close enough for him to touch it..

(2)

The Lady Moon walked along the sands of the sea shore, not daring have the waves touch her feet. Her white frock flew in the breeze, the night in her hair twinkled with stars that faded in the bright silvery glow of her smile and her grey eyes. She walked with grace only fit for the Lady of the Moon that makes the lonely and dark nights of Master Sea more bearable for all the lost sailors. Tonight, she meets the Master of her heart on the realm of earth, where neither of them belong, not even to each other.

(3)

Master Sea stood there with the deafening and continuous drumroll of the waves marking the approach of Lady Moon, giving away the sound of his heartbeats. His skin caught her glow as she curtseyed before him, as if she glowed only for him, and didn't she, tonight? The mighty waves broke at the shore, bowing at the feet of Lady Moon, coming so close but not touching her, for those are the rules of this realm.
"I hope the spray does not bother you, my Lady," he said.
"Nothing of you can ever bother me, Master," she answered.
The dying droplets of Master Sea's essence carried by the lord of wind, who knew of their plight, were the only feel they had of each other. He was the master of the sea, he had the power to drown this realm, kill every creature that lived on earth as he had done once before at the order of the Creator. It is he who shapes this earth and yet, he is powerless to touch his love, and he would destroy the whole realm if only she would let him.
"I am grateful to see you my love. This realm is kind to us to let us meet on its land. We honor its charity," said the Lady in reply to his roaring waves. Master Sea kneeled at her feet, picking the moonstones that were her tears; her gift to him, given at the happiest moment, and in the utmost despair. The stones glowed in his hands then disappeared, for he has placed them in the depth of his soul, to shine her love in the deepest parts of the oceans, where her glow loses reach and the monsters dwell.

(4)

They spent the night on the beach, enjoying the closeness, the proximity that they seldom have. But nights must always end, Lady Moon was still glowing when dawn came, but then the sun was running towards them and her glow faded. She became pale as the horizon turned pink, then red, then orange. Master Sea watched her in despair, fading in front of his eyes. She comforted him with the smile of the weary when they run out of words. The sea roared and roared, the waves as high as towers; for the Master was angry, but then they calmed and his anger was only sadness. He had promised her that this night, when they met and talked and laughed, would be a night of peace, that it would always be a night with a clear smiling moon and a calm endless sea. It was a night that inspired poetry in the hearts of men and love in the hearts of women. Now that the sun was up and Master Sea stood alone on the beach with the waveless sea whispering their story, he frowned because for the following nights, he shall see his love only looking away from him when she is at her throne up in the sky, and she will veil her face in the night until one day she will not show it at all. On that painful day, he will tolerate the darkness of his own soul for on the next she will look upon him again, slowly removing her veil, and she will smile at him. One day, he will meet her again, on a night much like the one that just passed, and maybe on that night, someone would tell the story of the love Master Sea has for Lady Moon.

 

The End!

Technorati Tags: Short Story,Literature,Romance,Moon,Sea,Love,Fiction,Fantasy

Super Special Birthday Tribute–Marwa Moharram

My first ever interaction with Marwa was when I heard her giving English lessons to the rest of her team; word of the day. I thought it was strange and sort of fake; normal people didn’t do that! Marwa isn’t a normal person of course which is why she became on the top of my “absolutely adore” list. I don’t really remember how we got to know each other, I think Ragia was the one who introduced us. So there she was, the tall skinny girl with the long braid and great smile, finally my friend.

First of all, I’m writing this on the occasion of Marwa’s birthday, Happy Birthdaaaaaaay! I just need to note that Marwa may have added a year to her age but she is the youngest person I know; if anyone refuses to grow up successfully while not being an idiot, it’s her. She has the spirit of an eight year old, starting from how everything in life is awe inspiring, how laughing is the cure for everything, and how so adorably cute she gets, to how easily it is to get her to not be mad at you anymore – of course her getting mad also happens in a very eight-year-old way.

Second of all, I should have written this the moment her evil husband decided to ship her off the UK with him (sorry but he really is evil for taking my best friend away!), for some reason I didn’t. I discovered a more amazing Marwa after she went away; a friend who manages to still care for everyone thousands of miles away. I don’t know how she does it, but she is definitely “awesome,” she has proved over and over and over again that if I ever need a friend, she’s it! she has had a series of unfortunate events that started ever since she went to live in Reading, and haven’t ended yet apparently; the girl is very accident prone! But as horrible as that all is, she still managed to laugh, smile, joke, be nice, sweet, and friendly, with everyone, and I mean EVERYONE!

Third of all, I just want to admit that no matter what I say, it will never be enough to describe the amazing girl that she really is, partly because there are sides to her I am sure I haven’t seen yet, and more importantly, because words fail to describe people like her.

Here are a couple of things that everyone needs to know about Marwa. She’s bright, cheerful, optimistic, happy even in her darkest moments, she has a spirit of a bumblebee, and her heart is probably as big as a whale’s! she is one of the most intelligent people I know, dedicated, loving, passionate, compassionate, and simply adorable. She lets go of the bad stuff even though she’s seen tons of them, she has a knack for making people happy, which she is quite talented at, and is great with kids. She has excellent taste in everything in the world, from music to clothes to friends (which explains me of course). She is a coffee addict, she is THE expert on relationship advice, and she can kick life in the tushy whenever she feels like it. she has no slang Arabic repository that makes me look like I’ve been living in the streets all my life, not that I mind in the least; calls for a few laughs which she takes heartily and we spend hours laughing at each other. And, she goes through the highest number of mishaps that I have ever seen a single person going through, literally!

On my birthday, she went out of her way, a lot, to make me a birthday that wasn’t a bad memory, and it was and always will be my best birthday ever, and I will always remember her and say a little prayer for her every time I see something relating to friends, how I met your mother, or the muppet show. I am lucky to have met her and unlucky that she had to go to the ends of the earth (just UK but I have to mind the dramatic effect) in less than a year. Oh well, she’s bound to come back ;)

 

Our favorite song :)