The Cashmere Scarf · The Cashmere Scarf Ibraheem Hamdi 6 It’s Okay Dear Ibhog, I know you’re different. You’re a mess. From that window of you to that life you think you see,

The Cashmere Scarf Ibraheem Hamdi

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The Cashmere Scarf

Ibraheem Hamdi


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IBRAHEEM HAMDI

THE CASHMERE SCARF

First edition : April 2013

Dar Al- Kutub record number : 2013/_____

ISBN : – – – –

Copyrights Reserved 2013

Written by: Ibraheem Hamdi

Edited by: Souzan Mansour


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Life makes more sense played backwards.


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Dedication

I will start with my father.

And I end with my father as well.

You start and end because of a parent.

And I love my father with the whole of my existence.


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“Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.”

- William Butler Yeats


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It’s Okay

Dear Ibhog,

I know you’re different. You’re a mess. From that window of you to that life you think you see, you regard what’s not really there. In your literal mind and big heart, you take too much in, and let too little out. You’re my own swollen love. Would you listen to me?

It’s okay if someone changes the way they think about you, Ibraheem. Even though you’re that sensitive to those who surround you, and even though you’re not supposed to read them that much, but it’s okay, because you do it too. And it’s okay, because when you do it, it doesn’t turn into hate. It can be many things in fact, Ibhog. One of them is that you’ve become home enough for them to change moods.

And even if, my weary friend, you’ve been hated by anyone, then what? Don’t you know that it makes you more special to us who love you? Don’t you know of those great ones who were cast in the hatred of this wretched world? And who were rejected by all that spoke? Where are they now, Ibraheem? Where are they now?

It’s okay to seek compassion in others. It’s not pathetic, and it’s not weakness. You have a sad past. Destiny has denied you some love, days during which you’ve become stronger, times when your heart learned that art of giving and when your soul knew about the language of feelings, and poor you, you reached that time when you needed it. The world understands. You don’t have to explain. There are many beautiful hearts out there, just like yours. Go to them. They await your return with baited breath.

It’s okay to be different, and it’s okay to be just like anyone else at times. No one can endure either on its own. It’s okay to express that beauty drives you, and it’s okay to shed a tear when it leaves you. It’s okay to be angry at those who forget about you, and it’s okay to forgive them when they remember you. It’s not black and white, dear Ibhog. It’s a colorful world. Nothing is constant and nothing should be so. At any moment, everything can change. You don’t have to comprehend it and neither do you have to conjure it yourself. All you have to do, Ibraheem, is to be at peace with how the world walks.

It’s okay to tell someone about it. It’s also okay to give them up for silence, if it makes your pillow warmer at night. It’s okay to miss someone who doesn’t know. It’s human. And it’s beautiful to let them know that you do. If they judge you, it’s okay. They have to do it sometimes, just like you do. After all, do you not know of the ones whose judgment threw them in love? Do you not know of the ones who came to care for those they hurt?

It’s okay to be not okay and be sad about it. It’s okay to feel insignificant. One’s low to one’s high tomorrow is their high to their low yesterday. If only they befriended time, they would have lived in peace. It’s okay to be away at times, and it’s okay to be there all the time. It’s okay to make mistakes, and it’s okay to feel bad about them. It’s okay to repeat them. God said it is. He’s a better judge.

Oh, my love how much I wish I was real enough for all of your worries. I just wish I could mother that troubled heart of yours, I wish I could be there when you’re alone with that mind of


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yours. I rescue you from you, and be there between your heart and you. I pat your pink wound and tap your scars with the cotton of my own lips. I know you need it too.

Fret not, my friend. For here I am in your realm of consciousness. I thank you for you, by being there for you.

Taking care of you.

And it’s still okay.

Noha, October 18, 2011


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"For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain; Thy life a long, dead calm of fix'd repose; No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows. Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow, Or moving spirit bade the waters flow; Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n, And mild as opening gleams of promis'd heav'n."

- Alexander Pope


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Introduction

It’s now past 9pm on Saturday, September the 29th of the year 2012. I have not given much thought to what I ought to include in an introduction, and I have not expected that I would write one, one day.

I have conveyed before to fellow writers my inability to survive word counts or article assignments. The content of this book was never the outcome of anything short for pure, unadulterated want to tell, not tied to waiting or anticipation, and not ending before scrutinizing eyes, or in revising hands.

This is but a true manifest of the will of its author at venting out that which he could never will back in. This is but half as much as he wanted to say, with half the art he wished to summon.

My name is Ibraheem Hamdi. I am an Egyptian, with all the contradictions this word brings. I have been writing for six years in an online blog. Two months ago, I thought I wanted to share what I wrote with a bigger audience. No, wait. I didn’t precisely think of that, I was rather curious about what would become of this blog if it was somehow put in a book.

This is what has become of it. And I’m now asked to try to introduce a book that was written across six years, six complete years, with all their experiences and moments – various, too versatile and unintended into being published, to readers who don’t know who I am. I have to admit. It’s quite challenging.

How can you trick yearning for validation into poised nonchalance? How can you hold a pretense that you can see right through? How can you then deny your own imperfection?

Word craft has such a resounding resiliency; it beautifies plain and makes it genuine. One is never sure of their ingenuity, not without some sort of mirror to help one see. Do you ever see how your hair looks? It’s the same.

One of the toughest conquests in life is that of purpose. A friend once told me that the great in this world were never preoccupied by what to do or how to do it, the tools for those have forever been cast in overabundance. What they were rather busy with, was the why of things. Why do you wake up? Why do you bother and smile? Why would you write things?

Why would you publish them? To what end? You shall not escape the assailing guilt exuded out of seeking fame, and you shall never feel the awesomeness everyone thinks you are. So why go public?

Well, I don’t know.

I’ve always had a dream of being a published author. I have tens of ideas for books and novels that never survived beyond their conception. I needed change and something new, and I thought why not give this a shot. Maybe it’ll make good grounds for more, maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll encourage me to write more, maybe it won’t.

I don’t know.

That which you are about to read is truly similar to this introduction. I have taken my thoughts with all their fidgety and feisty feats and put them into words. My talents at expression are born to


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pure love for sentences and language, and to a solid record of suffering. It is not rare that you should find good prose written with the ink that is its author’s soul – finite, scarce, and endlessly shifting.

I grew up with my words. I have undergone changes and I have never been constant. The curvature that is the substance of these posts, should you be able to draw it, will be something incomprehensible, yet surreal. It would have no discernible features other than its whole existence and its mystifying appeal.

This, I wrote before in the blog, in the voice of one of my fictional characters:

Anyways!

I was assailed by the thought of starting to write again for the same reason I wanted to survive. My life isn’t your typical day-to-night reel; I’m more of a pause rider. I inhabit clips in time, and I repose in the shadows of those who think about me.

I tend to take refuge in the whims of those who contemplate, and in the ideas of the ones who sit to poetry and prose. I’m your basic theory of inception, and even though a novel or a biography might have seemed a more plausible haven, or maybe have more substance, it proved incapable of containing the abundance of those pauses, and the infinite fidgeting nature of the one who breaks them to hearers.

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned.”

I’m endless, and angelically insubstantial. You do not hold me, not even the idea of me. I visit you, you don’t visit me. I can make you happy and I can make you sad. I do kiss those who smile in their sleep, and I do pat them when they wither. I don’t die, but I take breaks when I cease to be the subject of someone’s laughter, or even tears.

You shall learn that reality is a cover, that imagination is our true essence. That a blur is more beautiful than what it hides, that scrutiny is a curse and that those who enjoy it are more miserable than how much happier it makes them think they become!

Read me every now and then, and you’ll have less pain. Try and understand me, and we lost each other forever.

It is still past 9pm.

I have nothing else to write, really. I leave you with my words.

Read with simplicity.

Ibhog 2012

P.S. ‘ibhog’ was a name randomly chosen a decade ago. They kind of are my initials: Ibraheem Hamdi Othman Gawdat. Pronounced eye-b-hog, eyeb-hog and sometimes ebb-hog, it has been an identifier online, and often offline, for many years.


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“Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.”

- Dr. Kent M. Keith,

The Paradoxical Commandments


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On Books and Dreams

We all need a story, and I don’t mean just one story. We need to be constantly busy with something. We have this infatuation with the effect a piece of news about someone or something has, we always want to know about what would happen next, about how would someone react. We are high on gossip, especially if it had a string or two attached to our personal lives.

It keeps us refreshed and on edge, like we’re part of others’ lives, like we have invisible pieces of ourselves living in others’ minds and hearts. And once the story ends, once the anecdote is over and we’re back to work and life, something inside us dies. And our next conquest would always be to relive those magical moments, or maybe seek new ones with new people and about new incidents.

At times, the thing sprouts out of hand when people live their life to that goal. The high gets too addictive to the extent that would make you live off it, so your sole purpose will always be, day and night, to be a part of someone’s story, to always leave a mark, to try so hard and print a touch. Sometimes it goes well and people thank you for it; other times though, it utterly dooms you even though they might not notice it.

I believe every other author had once been locked in the daydream of sharing their life story. To them, their story is so great and so beautiful and touching that it’d be very wrong for others to miss it. It becomes a necessity for a writer at one point to just tell things, narrate them in all motion and color and to grab the attention of those addicts I mentioned above. A cunning author would also know how to make the addicts part of his story, and be sure of their eternal loyalty to his notion of storytelling, because to them it’s just another form of their own life, one that they might even love more anyway.

I keep wondering if every novel is just a different interpretation of some chapter of an author’s life. And it astounds me, because if that’s the case, then all what we know now as fiction is just the reality of hundreds of people in this world, and if those people had the chance to tell their story, then why not the rest of the world? I believe this is why fiction is never going to be old, it will be forever prolific and never dry out.

Thursday night arrived under a cloudy Cairen sky that surprised the plans of many. Weather these days is quite acrobatic, ever changing and unusually flexible. A close friend in the group returned to Egypt and because we haven’t really gathered since the revolution, we planned a Meeting Point night.

I had already decided I don’t want to work late. They were the last hours before a long vacation, and to my fatigued, twelve hours a day work routine, it was only a logical treat to work ten hours instead of twelve.

I emerged from inside the building, and was hugged by the crisp cold air. I hunted out my earphones and took a walk towards the park’s gate because my ride was stuck in some traffic along the desert road so I might as well meet him halfway. I listened to some music and the thought of me starting to run in those perfect April mornings to build some fitness was too animate with the music. After all, energy and losing weight somehow never fail to make one happy in this weird world.


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I’m now wandering inside air conditioned aisles. I miss the atmosphere, and even though I had quite stopped picturing my name on bookstands, the idea flirted with me. I paused, hands in pockets, head leaning to the left at times along with lined up horizontal titles. When a corner of those is quiet, and when it happens that I’m the only one there, I kind of forget myself for a while. I might hum a song, squat down to reach for a book, or maybe tiptoe for another one on a top shelf.

The thing is, it felt slightly different this time. It’s like my passion for reading had grown some careful guard, and I kept telling myself subconsciously to take things easy. I was sure of it because I didn’t want to get all of Mitch Albom’s books at once, and it was actually okay with me to read only one of his novels.

I was quite irritated by seeing author’s second works. Every time I grab an attractive cover, it says “By the author of...” and it mentions something else. I always go like, God. I should have read that one before this one. But again, that guarded voice inside me whispers: it’s okay you perfectionist.

And even though I don’t summon them on purpose, but memories and quotes always come upon me. I was told before that I could easily write like Stephenie Meyer. I was also told that my talent isn’t of a usual kind and if I never had the chance to nurture it then I’d be wronging myself.

It’s always as beautiful as an unexpected gift in a wrapped package the statement coming out from someone who would make the perfect typical reader; someone who never really read my blog, and never really mentioned books and culture to me before. When someone like that tells you: “you write amazingly beautiful, and you should give up this cursed career.” It’s a very honest and refreshing statement.

To tell you the truth, I don’t hate my career anymore. Well, I hate it. But I don’t hate it as much as I did last year. I have come to the resolution that it’s always a good thing to be busy with work, and it’ll help rather than distract with other endeavors in life. Adding a purpose to your existence is always easier than making the very first one work out.

I bought two books: For One More Day, by Mitch Albom and the infamous Who Moved My Cheese. By the time I wrote this, I had already finished Albom’s.

Before I go on to the rest of the night, let me give you a tip about his book: read it.

“Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.

What if you got it back?”

What I loved most about that book is the fact that I can write one like it easily. That’s how I produce verdicts by the way, I’m that obsessed with writing. If I read a novel that’s way out of my league, my joy is distorted. Badly.

What do I want more from life on that morning the sun wakes me up to the fact that I wrote a book? That I touched a life? That I had been the subject of someone’s pain relieved? That I had been the pond of their piece with stones unthrown? That I had married them to their feelings and made them live happily ever after?


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But then, and as if Mitch knew how I think through his words that I read, he slaps me with a fact:

“Maybe you’re surprised. Maybe you figure men like me, men who play in a World Series, can never sink as low as suicide because they always have, at the very least, that, “dream came true” thing. But you’d be wrong. All what happens when your dream comes true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn’t what you thought.

And it won’t save you.”

And back to my morning fantasy again. The sun is waking me up to the fact that I wrote a book. I keep trying to think of that as mundane as it could ever get, and I miserably fail. So maybe the realization can never be anticipated, only lived, by the utterly unlucky of people.

We drive over to the fancy restaurant. I order the ridiculously expensive Fajita and talk about the usual: work, marriage, work, and marriage. I had chosen the spot we sat inside very carefully because during April last year, a very special incident took place in this very restaurant, and a childish part of me wished it could, maybe, happen again. Like I told you, we get high on those magical moments.

The music was the same. The angle was perfectly identical to that of last year, only they weren’t there. Instead, I kept watching a blond Mom chewing on a cigar and deep in conversation with the figure who had their back to me. It kind of ruined the whole moment.

The rest of the gang then joined and we had a great chilly night full of catching up and mayonnaising.

I reach inside the shutters and spread out two slats for the scene outside to emerge. The day was unusually clear and from the second floor I had the chance to waste time waiting for my contract.

Skinny and cynical inside two huge brown boots, she had beckoned me to have a seat, even though there was no seat. I kept watching a desk with small plastic bears, baby pictures and many birthday posters. I was surprised it belonged to a guy, but then Karma calmed me down.

I return to the shutters and the sky. It was simply beautiful.

A Cinderella picture. A Tangled moment washes over. And I ask myself: “Why do I always make a big deal out of this stuff?”

I think this is why: I’m innately keen on details, just because I’ll story tell them later. If I spot something that I don’t find so perfect for a story, I ignore it. It’s a sickness.

Ibhog, April 23, 2011


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Unforgettable Lessons

I think I was around fifteen years old when a tutor in one of the private grouped lessons us kids used to attend as makeshift schooling back in KSA taught me that the following saying is often misunderstood:

“ ءر�� ا� ا�� ف ��ر ”

“God blesses a man who knows the truth of his worth”

“People usually mistake that for self-derision or underestimation,” he explained. And then he narrated to me the story of a famous scholar back through Islamic history and his dignified resistance to a bad ruler. This Caliph used to coerce palace visitors into low built tunnels of sorts, so that their passageway would be spent in crawling steps. Instead of emerging out at its end before him an upright figure, people used to come out in dejected prostration. The good scholar then entered the tunnel walking the ground with his feet only – imagine the strain it had to have caused his back to suffer, popping out of it standing up to the face of oppression.

Ever since that day and I adjusted my perception on matters of self-judgment. Guilt had a different flavor. It stopped its arduous lashes and instated wisdom in their stead. With years, however, tides of life made me forget this lesson; or to put it more cleverly, made me apply it in the wrong way, colossally.

I don’t know why or howcome I reached the conclusion that I’m simply not religious. Maybe it was because sins had some deal breaking feats I took too seriously, or maybe because I was always too enthusiastic and critical. I don’t really care. So one day, not only had I employed the false notion, but I even started to preach under its wing. I believed being religious had to have more conviction and less deeds, I never noticed that less doings was the death of conviction. I actually started to hate religious people. I began to fold everything that’s related to practice into hypocrisy and double standards, making a cave out of my domestic life, which was naturally conservative, and destroying every benefit there was of the great concept of putting up a guard.

I let my guard down. I was too accepting. I swore my habit of judging people into solitary confinement. I enjoyed the beauty of sharing debates with lost souls, as well as the amount of compassion received because of it. I became addicted to the floating nature of nothingness, to the charm of its carefree pauses and to waiting. I magnified waiting. I wrote about waiting. I basked in its warm nook and completely let go of who I am or what I really wanted.

Until one day I met someone half that way. Someone with such conviction, such dedication and such passion as to what I’ve become. I was suddenly under an emotional microscope that shined questions and that exuded scrutiny of my failure to reciprocate – for, how doth one reflex when one is blurred? Disappointment shadowed every laugh, and pain enveloped every tear. I strode right inside the shroud of Karma and mocked it. Its revenge was phenomenal.

However, as I look back now. It wasn’t really Karma. Karma is such a secular cloak surrounding atonement. Karma is for those who never really understood religion’s idea of the world and the oneness of its core. Life has one right scenario that ends well, and thousands of ones around


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it that end in suffering. It is not by the mere choice of one that this path is engineered, but rather by the blinding fact that it is a law that no one cared to contemplate that organizes this kind of passing.

The law that says you have to live life right, or else you’ll suffer. You have to know yourself, be yourself, and be good. This universe practically does bash anything else, like a bad cell or a growing tumor. It roughens its surfaces in so cruel a way that it makes you wail, but that shall also make you surmount absolute perish.

It’s a very thin path. It’s such a tremendous endeavor to find in this hay of a world the pin that would touch the correct cord of its music, of its idea of harmony, of its notion of purity and of its tendency to just be.

You shall not find the sun a moon on rising, and you shall not ever taste a river with salty water. Everything is itself.

And so must you be.

Ibhog, August 27, 2012


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Marriage

It was a Friday afternoon. I woke up strangely in tranquil, in opposition to the general year two-thousand-and-ten court rulings. After prayers and breakfast, I resigned to my reading, specifically, the part when Mr. Darcy was addressing Elizabeth Bennett in his pliable language, to allude to some of the actions that urged the heroine to turn his marriage proposal down ruthlessly.

Jane’s words were like medicine. English turn of the century rural life projected on your full of Cairo crap head feels like pain meds. Anyway, destiny decided to exact the 2010 ruling that was on hold, when that Friday crept its ugly incisors.

Now let me give you a quick recap. Back in September, my Uncle’s marriage fell apart not ten days after the happy wedding, in a cosmic proof of the fact that posits: if laughs follow tears, well, then tears follow laughs!

During the Holy month of Ramadan the two spouses were separate, and when the feast came both parties tried to end the marriage without the intercession of law, but in vain. Months flew by between futile quarrels and vainglorious confrontations, but no actions really took place, even when the matter knocked the Family Affairs Court doors, it somehow stayed there and was never at peace.

In financial terms, my Uncle was sucked dry. In societal terms, her family suffered like no other. And up until that half-white-half-black zebra-like Friday, I was out in leftfield, trying to be neutral yet royally deep in confusion. According to the design of my logic, it doesn’t really matter who knocks the marriage structure down first, it’s quite similar to the chicken and the egg paradox. Touching that subject is always a mistake of elephantine proportions.

In the part where Mr. Darcy was justifying his malevolent behavior towards Elizabeth’s friend, Uncle was pounding on our house door.

Uncle never did that ever.

He staggered through the corridor and jumped into my room. In melancholic breathless resemblances of sentences, and after I screamed my lungs out in fearful questions, he towed me out with him after breaking some terrible news: her family - in a procession of ELEVEN people – ten males other than the unbright bride, somehow managed to take refuge in my Grandpa’s guest room, and declare that they will not accept a divorce any later than the day. They skipped the part where they were rather coercing it.

Everything sunk. My mind, my heart, my muscles. I kept thinking not of what I will do if something goes wrong and we end up in vindictive tribal history or in the national newspaper’s Friday Mail, but rather of the ‘why’ of it. Is there something left I don’t understand? Is there something left the universe wishes me to not understand more?

“Ibraheem, keep an eye on Dad. He has diabetes and I’m afraid for his blood pressure. Ibraheem, please take care of grandpa, he’s sick. Ibraheem Ibraheem Ibraheem”, were Marwa’s words in my wake when I was running around the house hunting down some war clothes to put on before joining the battle field.

And I go. The elevator ride was somehow stretched into thin pause. The couple of blocks away from our place to Grandpa felt like a forest. You hear things that are not there. And the feelings; fear and anxiety – they reminded me of some unwanted days back before dad divorced my first step


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Mom. The days when everything left you undone, stuck in the middle of something with no left... or right for that matter. The days where, because you were still young and unaware, you only get to judge things in hindsight, with no chances whatsoever to evade the trouble.

I stand before the door, a glossy piece of wood that’s my only step left to all those raucous voices coming from the other side. I ring the bell, and think: this can’t be happening. This is not us! I enter.

Red necks with purple strings that are about to sprout their ingredients. Voices that are hoarse and splintered from all the yelling. Hands that are convulsing from all the nervous shaking and fidgeting. Emotional explosions after exchanging accusations. A poor distracted mediator who is deep in regret of his own voluntary gestures. And above all, a horrified uncle. All words somehow mingled with the thick atmosphere in a way that divested my ear of its ability to discern meanings. All noisy, everything is muffled. You hear something that shocks you like electricity. By the time you recover, someone had broken a vase. By the time you regain balance, someone cries. By the time you collect your bearings, someone throws them in flakes around the damn room.

I did not utter a single word. I’m not sure I could if I wanted to, honestly. Stunned is an understatement to how I felt. In dutiful moves, my only concern was to keep my uncle calm, tactfully pulling him into some of the inside rooms to regain breathing, voice and sanity, when things swerved out of control. Dad joined later to pull the tide low for a while, but he lost his feats before their strangely aggressive tones.

There were countless theories as to why they made such a rather violent raid. Some say to intimidate us – us, the kind, polite people who would prefer peace to trouble, no matter the price. Some say they had different agendas, ones of more... umm... haughty natures. I don’t know and I don’t care really. One thing I was sure of: if marriage was doing that to people’s lives, it should be a sin. A major one.

I was soaked in pain. My muscles were sore the way they’d be after a draining workout, even though my only movements were in the parameters of a room, a hallway and another room. My mood and spirits, needless to say, were remnants of a shipwreck.

Dad had high blood pressure, and the way my temples acted the rest of that day and night, spoke of similar symptoms. I never really get high blood pressure. I’ve had some emotional outbursts before, but the soreness, that was new.

That incident took place four Fridays ago. My tongue was in paralysis since then and this part of the series is nothing compared to those ugly hours.

And as strangely and contradictory as that might sound, I felt like hugging a wife.

Instead I just went back to my room and my severed in half Austin novel.

The divorce will take place next Friday.

Some people are caught up in the middle of their own sentences. Chasmal, is how you’d describe the distance between what they say and what they do. When it comes to marriage, love and relationships, the chasm grows. And it’s astounding, the fact that the hypocrisy of this society stems from all its individuals, in a precarious strata based in schools and top-scraped in the government. Honesty has become the dream. It’s the president we should all elect and vote for.

Someone then comes and says: “Individually, I’m confused. Globally, we’re a nation in chaos.” The similarity of the allusions strike me to the core. Are we really that blind?!


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In some post buried deep in the soils of my blog drafts land, I wrote that:

“Well, I just have one extremely critical point to add. There’s no department per se. We always forget that marriage is indeed a matter of the Providence, and the say we have in it is just a mere exercise in this life, a test of our belief in a higher power that makes things work. And a reminder to not ever flaunt wisdom in the face of this world, because the outcomes are no less than painful. I’m pretty sure we all know these simple facts, it’s just we rarely echo them inside our chests”

And I, mothered again by Jane Austin and deeply in love with her window into life, quote again:

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Let me, in all boast and no guilt, paint a simile that you might find weird. Simple and to the point: Marriage is like a deity. In its sacredness and divinity lies the salvation of man, but in its scrutiny lies his absolute misery.

There, I put it. Read self-help texts all you want, dwell in your past experiences, swim in arguments and conclusions, learn the meaning of painful happiness when your passion blooms in the wrong time, or when your love climaxes with the wrong person. Consider marriage a fiend that exterminates already felicitous mates, or breaks their shoulders with burden. Be confused and frustrated. Taste futility. Anything at all. But do not deny this fact: those who tried to stand out failed – you just stand out, you do not contend for it.

I want one thing: to get married the old way. The no movies and fantasies way. The no business deals and partnerships way. The no premature love and no implausible prudence way. The ‘I propose through your dad’ way. The ‘I share your confusion’ way. The marriage-the-deity way.

The way where the rest of the journey is up to marriage itself. Not to you, or to them, or to anybody, but to life. The way I won’t analyze things anymore. The way I can get on with my life, but instead of having one heart to sleep listening to, I’ll get to have two.

Humph.

I am yet to find the thin line in between, but I feel it’s there. It’s my only hope.

Number of dreams about you: six.

I wake up and go: it’s a vision! No no... it’s a dream, even though it was clearer than usual. It’s a vision, a very beautiful vision. But some scenes were vague! It’s a dream, and I’m pathetic. Ugh... it’s a nightmare!

Number of daydreams about you: only one, started once and never ended.


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Mom, on her death bed, used to give me that look. It was different than the way she regarded dad and my sisters. When she looked at them, she was sad and tearful, but when she looked at me, she was alert and hopeful. Talk about prophetic revelations. Ibhog fulfills the prophecy!

Ibhog, go bang your head on a wall. Or, I don’t know, squeeze your eyes so tight they might teleport you to the future. Just no peeking, okay? Good boy.

“What are my resources? I mean, I’m not rich, I’m not ready, I’m young, I’m not that handsome or very muscly with abs, what would a girl like in me?”. My best friend would reply, “Are you telling me that in this society, at the end of the day, you’re a number?! A bank account figure?! A weight?! HA?!!!”

He grabs a forkful of lettuce from his salad and then goes, “If you’re reduced to a number, then you’re not deserved.” Okay, that felt gratifying. Thanks.

But, again: What do I have?!

Nothing. I may have some eloquent love words and gestures, that end the moment I finish them anyway. I’m cute sometimes, you know, I do nice things, and I do know how to make tea with milk (if we were not out of milk of course).

“You’re the guy, you shouldn’t be this confused,” he goes. Oh, I’m not confused. I’m awesome baby. I’m spectacular. But wait... why am I writing this?

Crap.

During the infamous cataclysmic Friday relapse between the two families regarding the unhappily ever after-ed marriage, and before someone shouted and after another person broke out in all sorts of curses, I sat in one of the chairs near my dad. And we both suddenly found ourselves in each other’s eyes. And we stealthily exchanged smiles. I’m-here-for-you reassurances. A breather in a brewing hour.

Lately I’ve been confounded by a realization; I subconsciously consider marriage as a step in one’s life, a detour. I don’t know from what course, or how a detour can be a step at the same time. Somehow, in my mind, the theory is etched that way! When something is etched, scholars and counselors who hold seminars around the world to save confused couples say: you have to unlearn it.

Oh really? How enlightening.

So anyway, I’m unlearning it. You’d think being unwed is autonomous, but I assure you if that was true, God wouldn’t have created us like poles who constantly attract each other like magnets. And the existence of more than one sex wouldn’t have been that important for the sustenance of this world. And I’m not talking just about human reproduction.

In the mist of the last two months (as far as my memory serves me), I wrote an inflicted-with-software post and mentioned something about deadlocks. I didn’t mention how the situation is resolved inside software systems.

When a tie as such takes place, one of the locking states is terminated. After that the deadlock ends and the other process resumes. The one that’s been terminated ought to be reissued in the future. And rosy life moves forward.

In my personalized version of deadlock. I think it’s quite obvious, given my current state of affairs, what state to terminate. Na-ah, CUT!


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Cut!

See? I just did it again. I theorized marriage as an exclusive action! Like climbing a hell off road. Like, I do it and forget about everything else. Or I take care of everything else and forget about it. This is erroneous thinking.

In fact, marriages that sprawl out of such convictions, in my humble opinion, are more willing to fail than others. Logically speaking, when comes the time, after you marry, you start to worry about everything else other than marriage itself. It becomes inconsequential and ceases to be of importance. Therefore it will simply die.

Marriage has to be a step in the same stairway to live life right, not an off-track journey. You do not get out of your way to be espoused, you get espoused to keep yourself on track. Egyptians not only consider marriage a detour, they ravaged its simplicity incongruously, to the extent that it actually destroys lives. They offended marriage-the-deity.

I’m tired.

Did it ever grab your attention, how the words ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ sound? Did it play with a thread or two in your mind, how soft the first sounds and how hard the second does? The femininity of ‘wife’ and the masculinity of ‘husband’ descend from old I believe. It’s just a thought that crossed my mind and I wanted to share it.

Salonat Marriage is a term (modern) Egyptians use to deride the way some couples decide on their lives. The word Salonat is derived from the French word Salon, and we Egyptians call our guest rooms, salons.

In brief terms, the process starts when a man notices a woman in public. He starts to ask about her relations and family, and in some cases might get to speak with her, mostly on formal and direct terms. The proposal never takes place with the woman, or outside her household. The man must pay a visit (mostly with his own family), to the woman’s guardian (mostly a parent, a brother or an uncle). And simply ask her hand in marriage.

Preliminary inspections take place, in good intentions, and the couple get engaged. During their engagement, they get a better chance at discovering their potential. They communicate, but not freely as married couples. The chances that they would have feelings for each other aren’t high, but sometimes that does take place during one’s engagement. After that, they marry.

The reason the term now is rather derisive, is that those marriages tend to be foolish, and in a time where ‘love and feelings’ are highly demanded, and ‘honesty and transparency’ are highly lacking, the journey ends off a cliff.

The bottom line is, you’d find the majority of people expressing their frustration at the fact that marriages could take place without ‘feelings,’ or without ‘getting to know each other for real.’ And in mutinous choices, you’d find them exclaiming in all enthusiasm: “I’ll never marry through Salonat!!”

So in the Egyptian society, marriage is a package. Different ways and methods with different kinds of people, with the same probability of each failing or succeeding.

Alas, rarely do I find someone asking the right questions. Our tendency to convey our opinions and the bloated pride in our eloquence during the process made preachers of all of us. We are all torch holders in the trek called life. Everyone tells others what to do, and forgets to contemplate what they themselves are going to do!


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So basically, you’d find ones who’ll actually be happy with Salonat marriage, but who unthinkingly revoked it as an option, and made a history out of failed love relationships. And you’d see ones whom it’ll never work for, but they keep trying for it tens of times, breaking world records!

What a confused society.

So you should ask yourself what will work for you, not what will work. In fact, a thinking such as unadjusted is dangerous. And the newspapers that haunt us on mornings with terrifying divorce rates, never mentioned the types of marriages behind the divorce cases!

It’s only reasonable to attribute some of them to the infamous Salonat method of course, but I think the matter is rather farfetched. It’s a fifty-fifty chance, as they say, that any type of marriage should end in divorce or not. The reasons are best described on a case-by-case basis really. And you’re one of the cases!

You’re a product. You grew up in a certain way. You might have been a rebel (like most of us), and decided to veer right or left, whatever worked for you, so you added to the process. You have a past that’s a part of you. You have habits and traits, hopes and dreams. A personality.

You have ‘you’! Please don’t be in denial. And most important of all, do not inhabit someone else. I believe that Salonat or not Salonat, an Honest Marriage is the one that survives.

And enough with the preaching! John Gray made it crystal clear that most of his work was a result of a successful marriage he’s a part of. So unless you’re happily married, emotionally stable and not angry, preach us not!

About me, I’m not sure yet what will work best for me. But I’m learning. And the presence of potential expedites the process. It’s obnoxiously confusing, but no one said it’s easy anyway.

I might be ‘Elizabeth,’ but no one said you shouldn’t keep reading until her happy ending.

And, I don’t know, but isn’t it only normal for part of the confusion to be shared by two who love each other, where he has the capacity to contain hers, and she has the capacity to contain his?

“I think you’ll have to consider traveling before making any steps.”

“Why not make the very thing with her?”

“You have to be on solid ground.”

“You know, it’s unfair. It’s really unfair. The amount of decisions we take on the account of our future partners”

Like parents who wrong their future kids by choosing the wrong mothers.

Like men who decide it won’t work without even giving women the benefit of the doubt.

Like women who say no to men who haven’t even stepped up yet.

Like people who break the bond before it even starts.

Like couples who divorce each other before they’re even married.

Like making false assumptions.

Like still living as if you’re the only one involved, while your other half is out there, oblivious.

It’s unfair and wrong. But at the same time it’s very very hard to unlearn.

Maybe you should unlearn it with them as well!


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Who knows...

I don’t know anything.

2010 is the I don’t know year.

Ibhog, May 7, 2010


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The Past

There are certain levels of sadness that introduce you to parts of yourself you never knew existed, and it’s always a much purer version of you that couldn’t be any you-er than you. You fall in love with it and forget to move on.

Years later, after the sadness is supposed to have gone away, and after the thick walls that used to suffocate you are supposed to have crashed down, you still miss those days. Not because you like being sad, and not because there is anything related to a good memory, but because, just because, you miss who you were back then. You were more alive and full of feelings.

You realize you had substance that you currently lack, now that you are all wise and too mature. So you go back; you run back to your past, dig deep, swim in the worst of it, and try to feel alive again. You give your heart the chance to beat the beat it used to beat, and for your soul to ache the ache it used to ache. You feel lighter, because it’s usually good change.

And then, you feel terrible.

I know for a fact that your love was blindingly foolish and blindingly true. At times, I wish I would someday feel that version of your heaven with someone; but does the universe really give you what you have taken from others?

I don’t know.

When someone writes, they grow in a dimension that is too impatient. If they stop, they get stretched thin and suffer and then they don’t know who they are anymore. If they go on, their words divide them into pieces, and then the eventual lack of them turns those pieces into motes of dust.

And it doesn’t stop.



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Again

He was seen.

The wild, yet imperceptible tremble hanging by the corner of his mouth was seen, by her. In a sense, she has been waiting for it; her infinite pursuit of being there for him has finally been fulfilled. He is down in the worst possible way; an eastern, egotistic, proud man, weeping right before her unblinking incredulous eyes.

She worked so hard to shield her happiness from his sadness. On her face, self-congratulation was fiercely clear. Triumphant she was, for she can now have him. She makes her first move, which ironically enough she learned from him, by being remarkably silent. She knows by heart now that this kind of presence is his idea of good company. So she lingers there, beside him, waiting for his tears to finish crying him out.

This is her idea of heaven and his of hell. Only for a while though it went on that way, until destiny dealt them the parting it did all people who make mistakes.

I was having lunch today when my sister told me that during her upcoming vacation, she would enroll in some kind of story writing competition. She needed to start with her draft very soon and was asking me for ideas.

I told her why not write the story of a man who’s sick of his life, like her brother, and who decides to start visiting the elderly. He would start being a part of their own stories, because his own story, the one he’s been trying so long to tell, has failed him. And then, after he’s known about their troubles and hardships, and after he’s made those of them that lived happy, he’d know that he must stop thinking about his sadness, and that he must instead regard the ailments of those around him.

I didn’t want my sister to be bitter like me. The plot was never that way in my mind; it was rather focused on a man who’s made a habit out of wallowing in sadness and who enjoys being the subject of others’ compassion. An emotional fiasco, of sorts, he sure was.

I’m cast in wordlessness. I can’t conjure up the courage I once wielded two years ago, to confess about the fact that a serious glitch is severing me and my father apart now. Many of this blog’s readers were part of that story, while some of them were its heroes. I’m not quite sure how to describe the breathless, voiceless stress that crunches my pillow every night these days. I don’t want to talk about the call I make to my sister each night to ask her if she’d talked to him, only to hear that it was in vain.

I... love my father.

There’s not a single person in the world that can fathom the complexity and the sublimity of this relationship and no one would know of its intricacies but God. I could express the stories and the events, but I’ll be always in awe at the nature of domestic relationships, about how the human heart can carry so many countless emotions together and mix and toss them into one gigantic, never-ending cosmic experiment. The ceaseless ricochet between redemption and anger, between depression and relief, between ignorance and attachment is… just… unbearable.


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I wish I had no words. I wonder what it would have been, had I not been acquainted with writing. Maybe then I’d have put things into their natural place and size. Maybe then I’d not have to contemplate trouble into disaster and meditate small into big. This is what writing does to you: it makes you put everything under a microscope of metaphors and similes, surrounded by memories and reminiscences. It flies you up high and leaves you without gravity, without reference, and absolutely without destination.

It truly hurts to sometimes deserve better by the ones who should’ve known. But it’s okay at the end, because you love them anyway.

You are on my mind, even though I don’t know who you are yet. People live in their past yet I now take refuge in my future; a future where I coexist with nameless people, and faceless beings. All what matters there are souls and feelings, and it’s so beautiful, how the lack of clarity hides from you what ugliness might be awaiting behind it.

I think of you every day. I’m afraid the moments you live in my mind are more than those we’d spend once life exacts our happening, but that’s okay. It’s all the same to me. As long as I get to think of you, pray for you, and be with you, then that’s okay.

Ibhog, May 18, 2012


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Random Rant

Why hello there.

I saw this photo on facebook today that says ‘hello’ was the name of Margret Hello, the phone inventor’s lover. He said, ‘hello’ when he first tried out his genius invention, and since then it’s been used as a phone greeting. I don’t know if that’s true though, but it was interesting.

I’m in my hotel room now cast in lonesome word-lorn. There’s this quote I stole off of a fellow writer’s blog that goes:

“Traveling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a story-teller.” – Ibn Battuta

Well. It’s true. Travel indeed renders you speechless. It leaves you so busy watching the world that your mind can’t focus on making words. Then, when one is back from their house of seeing, their mind begins to want to tell. For a writer, this want isn’t something to be reckoned with. A writer can’t stop the avalanche that is their thoughts. They either put that for eyes to read, or keep cramming them in their chest until they suffocate from their own stories. I believe stories have a will of their own, one that surpasses in volition that of their teller. In realms of storytelling, stories control their bearers, and eventually, their hearers as well.

I don’t just have stories to tell. I have lifetimes stuck in my heart. They have encumbered on my breathing to the extent that at times I can’t sleep. My inspiration is too adamant for words and it conquers my mind in the least expected of moments and with the most potent of pitch. I sometimes wonder what would happen if they had a device that measures one’s thoughts and pain. I imagine standing in a queue of wondering people, each too impatient to know how much pain they bear.

My turn comes. The device explodes.

How clamorous it is a wish un-come true? How naught it is a moment sought that actually comes true? What is it with waiting that beautifies its subject and nullifies its final happening? What kind of sick illusion is that?

Loneliness isn’t a game anymore. Neither is need for love and companionship. I’m sick of people who keep making fun of this and of ones solemnizing their agony in some stupid quotes, and some fancy pictures of roses and pretty barelegged, allegedly heartbroken women. I’m also sick of those who believe their rising above that crap is wisdom, or even maturity. I hate everyone who takes pride in being single, it’s pathetic and against nature. I hate all talk about relationships and drama and the ones who think they get it, even the ones who think they’ll never do.

I’m developing a serious condition, I’m stuck in a parenthesis that follows happiness. It has ‘I want this too’ at its heart. I’m hating labels again and their necessity that I can’t seem to get rid of. I don’t know what to do.

I pray to God every day. I pray to God every single day.

And I know. I know that things I know not of shall unravel in the eventual unfold of them, and knots stressing the neck of my comfort shall unfurl in the eventual cease of them, inshaAllah. But, I


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just. I just need a hint. I really need a sign. I hate signs because of how high they raise the expectations bar. But I suddenly want something to look forward to again.

It’s murky. The other side of the bed is so cold. The quiet room is now scary, not peaceful. The laugh of a kid in the park, and the squirmy baby in his mother’s arms are now a dream so far.

What’s with artists and dealing with subjects that are always out of their reach?

What’s with writers and having to put in words that which never puts them to sleep?

Ya Ilahy.

Be strong ya ibhog!

Ibhog, July 22, 2012


29

Hijab Removed

I think a discussion about Hijab is one of those that are too complicated because they’re too simple. When an idea is too simple, the discussion could go on for eternity because in the middle it’ll just lose track and it’ll try to go over the basics just to make something out of nothing, and to justify a stream of actions.

I remember clearly one time I read a very famous blog post about a girl who decided one day to go out without Hijab; she was describing how nothing really happened, and how particularly refreshed she felt that day. When I had gone along the comments, I had the impression that she did something very courageous, and other girls idolized her instantly. On the other hand, many took the other extreme side, and condemned her behavior relentlessly.

Her logic was calm and she spoke as a matter of fact. Through her words, you’d discover how your own lifestyle might also have what she just gave up: something she was indulging, for a very long time, rather than something she naturally did. Anyway, maybe that’s not what she meant, but I believe it was one of the impressions her story gave to readers.

I really want to follow my own statement above and not elaborate much on something that’s clear as the sun. Let’s first define what Hijab is.

What is Hijab? Hijab is both a garment and a way of living. And that’s pretty much the crux of the matter and the reason behind why people complicate things. On a grand scheme, you’d find two teams: ones that think it’s just a behavior: a moral code that can safely be followed without the garment; and the second team takes extra care of the garment, its rules and form, yet forgets what it should bring to the inside of one’s character and to the fabric of their way of living. I’m sure you all saw how sometimes a Hijabi puts on make up or wears eccentric outfits more than the non-Hijabi. And how the non-Hijabi can be a better person than the Hijabi!

It’s wrong to separate the garment from the context it should bring upon the ones who don that garment. There’s balance that our religion meticulously built, and it’s quite frank how the least offense to this balance brings utmost confusion; it builds enmity between the teams and it leads us to nowhere in the end.

Another very important point I would like to bring to your attention, is the existence of many who think they live in that balance, while in fact their Hijab simply doesn’t follow the rules. When I say balance, I mean God’s balance, not your own created balance. If God had known in advance that we can make the rules, He would have left the matter to us, like many other matters that we’re actually obligated to explore and innovate in; but he didn’t: he specified the rules in his Book and through his Prophet’s life. The balance here is learned not created.

So, it’s really natural for someone who’s firmly at peace with the way they live, to find it very hard to change it. If you’re a girl and at some point you find in the confines of your belief, the one that’s very deep inside and that’s brutally honest, that Hijab for you is really just a garment, that in fact you’ll feel better without it, that you’re so close in your social code to the ones who gave it up, then that’s just what it is: a garment. You already gave it up. You have to remember that you’re not really a Hijabi anymore. You either should change the way you live, which is difficult, needs a lot of knowledge, change of environment and acquaintances, or, if you’re not up to such life alterations,


30

then you can safely remove it; you’ll instantly feel better, because it’ll be closer to who you really are, and being one’s self is always redeeming.

Don’t feel bad or offended: many had to go through this flavor of salvation in order to be closer to God. God doesn’t want you to indulge Him, God wants you to live happily, and follow Him lovingly. If it takes an ounce of rebellion to clear the dusty mountain that’s confusion, then do it. Learn and seek; come back to him when you are at peace. He shall welcome you with open arms you’ll forever love. But, I have to warn you that if in your journey you found peace and you finally learned about His way, but you chose to not follow Him, then be careful of his Wrath. He shall show you the right path and then it’ll be your turn to follow it. If you don’t, you’d be in grave danger.

If on the other hand you’re a non-Hijabi (or a Hijabi that doesn’t follow the rules correctly) who actually believes in the kind of balance I just described, and who’s not at peace with the social environment that’s Hijab-free, then you have to complete your belief by action, and if you ask me: your case is much easier than the first one. All you need is more faith; you have the right set of beliefs, but your faith isn’t strong enough to push you forward. There are many ways to strengthen one’s faith: all good deeds, the simple act of learning about what God wants from us, skills at changing slowly for the better, and the right people around.

To end my discussion: be yourself. Don’t be afraid of judgment, and don’t indulge too much because it might backfire and make you hate what was in place for your own welfare. Look inside yourself carefully. Ask God for guidance. And most importantly, know your stand: you either follow the rules, or you don’t. If you follow the rules: live them. If you don’t: don’t try to live them, rather learn and take your time.

After all, God knows what’s best for us, and if we forget about all those earthly distractions and just focus on Him, we’ll find Him everywhere.

�رآ�.. ا��م و�� ا��م أ � ا�� وا%آ�ام ا�$�ل ذا !

Ibhog, September 23, 2011


31

Age Difference and Marriage

There’s not a wholesome act in life worth cherishing more than learning about one’s self. It dances between the unknown and the familiar, striking the kind of balance that echoes right in the heart of comfort, and that just gives needed thrill.

On a ride home, in a telepathic conversation with my room’s ceiling, or under a hot shower – it doesn’t make any difference, my pensive side swings too deep to possibly be any more aware – I was thinking about age difference and marriage. To be brutally honest, the way my life is assuming course up until now, and the way my past’s etched in my past, and with those around, I think that it’s safe to say now that I really feel comfortable with girls who are much older than me.

I keep inspecting my behavior with them. I’m often myself, there’s no contesting impressions, and there rarely are irksome thoughts that usually tail after other kinds of goodbyes. The strings are always unattached and love giving here is more of a one way thing, because well, it’s mothering. Mothering usually works one way, and it’s so amazing how they do it naturally when one perfects that act of being a son. The funny thing is, I do that naturally too. It’s as if I never grew out of it. Mothering is sufficient upon itself too. Mothers give and take by being mothers. It’s miraculous.

I searched for proof and I found it. Many of the gestures towards me, and many of what I receive in candid talking don’t really fall under friendship. I have many friends, and they don’t do that to me. Friendship is different than this special relationship. I also realized that all girls I know are way older than me, hence the heartwarming fact that I’m not friends with girls per se. In fact, the few times it tried to happen, it failed miserably. Many factors raided upon the calm village of mother-and-son, and held all comfort captive.

Religiously speaking, it doesn’t exactly feel right to befriend someone from the soft sex. There’s going to be denial there, like a ghost that hovers endlessly upon the parties. The more the age difference, the less potent the apparition becomes, until it completely fades. Needless to say, it’s still different from having a real Mom; and here comes the amazing rules of this religion to trim any bad detours and and protect us from any bad whims.

So yeah, I heart a graceful, older, religious lady. Not only do they never fail to remind me of my mother, but I just feel comfortable. Simple. At peace. Ra7et baal keda...

That’s not what I want to talk about though. That was just an introduction.

What I came to realize is what if marrying someone who’s older works for my specific case? I remembered how Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him, married our Mother Khadija, with an age difference of 15 years! And, wait for it, he was an orphan! And he loved her dearly, and she loved him dearly. This kind of love I believe is similar to the kind of love I’m talking about here.

She wasn’t just a wife, she was also a mother. He was twenty-five, she was forty years old. She was rich, he wasn’t. By the typical rules of our societies now, this just won’t work. And even if it does, if the wife’s expectations don’t include mothering, she’ll end up disappointed and unhappy. And no, it’s not really a special case because he’s a Messenger from God; he was twenty-five: that’s fifteen years before prophethood.

Hm. You know, I always sigh mid-writing. It’s sad in a way! I write and write, and then I stop, re-read, and just sigh. It’s funny too.


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A friend (from those great sisters/mothers) threw that question in my face a few days ago: “Did you ever consider it? What if this is what works for you?!” The thing is, I kind of considered it before; it was very difficult. It wasn’t even a huge age difference; but, maybe that’s why it was hard. I mean, a big age difference after all is easier than a small one. Expectations will be much clearer, and marriage will safely transform from a husband-wife completely, to another realm or... mix. I don’t know. It’s very precarious.

Also, I was told that it’d be a mistake of proportions to assume of a wife what’s assumed of a mother. She has to exactly know the mishap that is her husband beforehand. Or we’ll end in disappointment, again.

It’s still a really nice thought though. Some girls do that, even when they’re not told, even when they’re not older! And it has to be natural. Those beauties are on the verge of extinction these days. Some amazing graces mother you by their mere presence, by the way they laugh, smile, or even cry. The peace of mind they summon around their contented souls is just a healing balm, and oh, the nostalgic fragrance they exude; their religious sides and their shy natures, their dreams, their silent worries and realistic expectations; not to mention, their families and friends... Everything is just prefect begad.

Yet, they’re rarely around or in appearance. They’re not ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ or ‘crazy.’ They’re just themselves to the extreme of themselves. They love themselves when everyone else is busy putting on make-up (metaphorically and literally speaking). They’re calm when everyone else is enjoying unnecessarily loud blabbering. They’re wise when everyone just talks. They’re home when everyone else is lost outdoors.

One of those, dear world, is my dream wife. One of those, dear God, is what I pray for.

�ل و��4 ��( ا� +�5 ا� ر34ل أن ��.� ا� ر1& ا�0�ص -, �.�و -, ا� �� , �� +*() '&�: �) � و9(� �8�ع ا�� ا�.�أة �8;*��.ا�>

That’s so true.

Ibhog, October 22, 2011


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And it was one of those moments, when words literally fail you like soldiers flee their ranks, when feelings overflow like waterfalls, when tears take refuge right in your ducts like hostages stuck in the middle of their tracks, when love confounds you, and surprise locks you in a pause of your own. One of them hours, when all

you can do is one of two things: you either change the subject, or just let your heart beat the meanings to those around, in all present silence.


34

Men

Isn’t it amazing how much related guilt and heartbeat are?

You know, there’s not a suffering that measures up to the one experienced by an eastern man who goes western every once in a while. Choices are either so freaking thin, or they’re too confusingly wide.

“He couldn’t wait for the day his mother would show him the photograph of the girl he was to marry, a charming girl, he hoped, with cheeks like two Simla apples, who hadn’t allowed her mind to traverse the gutters and gray areas, and he would adore her for the miracle she was.

Sai was not miraculous; she was an uninspiring person, a reflection of all the contradictions around her, a mirror that showed him himself far too clearly for comfort.” - Kiran Desai, from the Inheritance of Loss.

I remember a good friend once telling me not to think on behalf of others; not to decide something for them, because it’ll be unfair for both of us. But I can’t help but do that really, I read people too well, and even though I might be mistaken, there’s always a trace that proves that my judgment was correct, and I can’t live with that trace. For me things are too black and white. I just can’t accept gray, it’s how I’m built; one can’t easily change that.

I obsess, and the more I do the harder it becomes for nature to assume its course at nurturing innocent acquaintances. I take note of little details, and I think of things no one really cares about. I don’t like disappointing people, and I’m too harsh on them just as I’m too harsh on myself. To top all of that, my kindness misleads me; my idea of fancy gestures clouds my true intentions, and although I like to be known for who I really am, it alarms me and it just nudges my comfort. It’s like, I just have to keep an outer shell, just in case.

Believe me, the question Desai above was trying to answer for the guy is universal. Men are perplexed by their own instinct for hunt, and their own craving for a home. They’re completely opposite things; and we men fall for one and mistake it for the other. You don’t hunt something that you can live with, you idiot.

You can’t have a challenge for a lifetime, it’ll drain you out. You’ll be dead before you even know it. Someone you go all those miles for, someone you change your own skin for, someone you take pride in having managed to impress; is most probably someone you don’t live with. People you can live with are ones who complete your sentences, ones who are too comforting, ones who don’t really urge you to fall off cliffs for them, rather cheer you on by their mere presence; ones who you can exercise silence with, free and unguarded silence.

Alas, just as it is with all people who have to make mistakes so that they really get to know them, this is like this. You actually have to go all the way and hit the very wall everyone knows about, get your butt all the way back, admit you were wrong, and then go for the she who you never thought would be the one in the first place.

Or did you?

Ibhog, March 10, 2012


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Trip to India

When I’m going through writer’s block, I leave writing and turn to reading. Reading my own posts. This egotistic statement was uttered here before; reading myself is becoming sensational and proves very useful most of the time. It gives me hope, builds motive and just makes me downright happy.

We were speaking about just that: my blog. I told him that it happens many times that only the beginning of a post is the most difficult. The rarely surmountable block is the real challenge; sometimes I just scribble down anything for my haggard fingers to loosen up before I start to make any sense. Writing resembles sports in so many ways, you have to warm up. This is me warming up.

I don’t know if you notice it when you read bestselling novels, but every writer goes through similar steps. I can feel it in their words, in the progression of their plot and the development of their style throughout the book. They always start on variable, sometimes weird threads. It takes talent, and a whole lot of fame, for readers to swallow the lump that’s a story’s prologue. Gradually, their stamina starts to fire up, their excitement fails but to overflow through their sentence structures, their true souls ride their original metaphors and just like that, the rest of the story top sells.

There are quite a few however that write gripping overtures; I’m guessing that this is nothing but the production of careful editing, or the shot of mere chance. It’s also amazing, how some don’t really publish their stories in the order they were written! Meyer’s first written chapter was in the second half of her Twilight novel. I love how writing is flexible like that. You just pick a point, and then go. Don’t stop. Don’t over think or perfect. Just write your heart out.

Hearts are the real prize winners.

So this is me picking a point, dear readers. I have had a conflict of desires, a quite familiar one at that. Do I write in my blog? Or do I finally start a book draft and use the still vivid details to enrich a fictional story?

After hours of consideration in the confines of my cozy room that I missed loads; I decide that this is me perfecting the channel of what will just have to come out in words anyway. All those scenes that I watched, all those moments that I lived and all those metaphors that I drew by the laughs of some and the eyes of others in all the different countries, are just material for writing.

I’m a watcher. I can make anything writable after God wills it. And I do put you in my own eyes to see that which I saw, to admire that which I admired, and finally, to give me peace. Yes, you fulfill my inflicted purpose, by adjusting yourself by the window of my own imagination.

And then just like that, dear friend, you make me have happier mornings.

I hope you enjoy this, as much as I hope I do.

Last January, in addition to a whole country’s ailment, lodged itself in my heart a different kind of knot; I was having trouble at work, and let’s not mention some personal leftovers from the year before, that finessed themselves only days before our great revolution. I was trying very hard to switch careers. I wrote before about it; a scheme in my life back then, to change everything and to turn all pages at once. It was very naive, and it did more harm than it did any good.


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I remember exactly a day in February after returning to work when the manager of the department I was supposed to be transferred to informed me that he won’t be able to approve it after all. Call it revolution aftermath or just bad luck but they have lost a large bid that resulted in throwing many people into what’s called un-billable time – a corporate’s deepest fear, and an employee’s slowest death. To perfect the circumstance, my own department was actually under demand. There was no way I would make it under these conditions. I lost two months of exerted efforts preparing for my new career that I never followed.

Looking back, these events were the best that could have ever worked for me. I remember how depressed I was and I laugh. I spent a very tough, vacant month and then joined what’s becoming now the biggest project in our company with the awesomest team I have ever worked with.

It’s awing how sadness is that important for happiness at times! This change of perception is one very precious lesson that I’m still trying to learn.

The new project kicked off and, as I was already longing for routine anyway, I swam, literally. I lost myself to work. It was killing me physically but other than that I basked in fulfillment. I was compensating the months I lost. I stood out just because I wanted it, not because they needed it. It was simply amazing. I would have never arranged my prospects that way, not in a million years. Thank God for God.

Months later I was left to choose whether I’d like being picked for an assignment abroad or not. It shall last for around a month, I shall be alone, and it shall be India.

I said no.

The team members who were previously there gave impressions that were more repelling than encouraging. It’s been so long since I traveled, let alone to such a far country on my own. My perfectionism KO’d me on that one, and I refused, understandably, which contributed even more to my stance.

But then a somehow devout corner of my soul kept asking me why would I never just trust God? To just let him be responsible for things? Did I not make it this far? Was it not only months ago that I had completely lost hope in everything? Why do I not look at myself now and just leave the burden of the future to Him? Because obviously I’m no match for the intertwines of destiny?

The line of thoughts calmed me down. It sedated my worries and for a fleeting moment I wasn’t a perfectionist anymore.

I wrote to my manager and told him that if God decided for me to make it so far, then He shall do the same the farther I go with Him. I was very open about my developed conviction!

God doesn’t let people down. Never. He’s holding this universe together, if letting down was like Him, I don’t think anything would have survived. It’s like everything is glued with love and care. Every single thing together.

Days passed and even though I was tamed by the reign of faith, I still was a bit anxious about preparations. I couldn’t grasp the idea, you know. I’m not embarrassed about it as much as I find it endearingly indicative of man’s weakness but I was simply afraid of the unknown. Heck, I was sometimes frightened. But I kept reminding myself of my devout moment. It was my only hope.

Many things happened during those weeks of May. My sister got married and left me to mope, is all those things together. It was very destructive, and I have written about it many times. I’m an emotional being that is huddled under a tough crust. I’m an indecisive baby whose ego obscures his tendency to just need to be told what to do. I’m an explosion of opposites. I’m a firework of


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contradictions. All in color. I attract everything in you, because I click with cords you don’t even yet know your music touches.

I used to imagine myself soothing myself, and at times crying to myself. It was really unfortunate. My withdrawal tightened my corner, and for me the soft sex lost their reality before my implausible desire for their existence.

We’ll touch on that later, dear readers. The apocalypse that’s Ibhog’s passion for the soft, and his utter failure at putting that passion into anything near real.

Humph.

One morning, during the Weeks, our team was hoarded in one meeting room for one of the many critical situations we got used to. They are always nice times. Group support in action. I love each and every member of this great team from the bottom of my heart. Anyhow, I was fetched by my manager and told that a new member is joining the team soon – a senior who’ll lead one of the sub-teams and who happens to be, well, one of the heroes of this story, and my own mentor!

Ahmed Essam was the one who received me when I joined our company. My metamorphosis was under his direct observation; his subtle interferences and course corrections are strong reasons I’m what I am these days. I could not articulate how happy I was we’re sharing projects again!

Two days later I was informed that he will, to top off all of what God has so excellently arranged for me so far, accompany me in my business trip to India starting the second week of June.

I couldn’t really ask for more.

Is there some way for a writer to tell the reader that they’re smiling? I mean a formal way that can be used in real novel writing? Not a smiley or so, maybe a star surrounded word in bold? Or just a direct statement?

Or maybe just a damn good heart sinking metaphor?

I used to wait for that Indian ad on HBO about plywood that looked so good made in a coffin that someone changed religions to die in one. The ad had a sort of vintage toned song that never failed to make me smile! It was very odd! My mouth inadvertently unfurled in happiness the moment that tune played. I tried to locate that song online when I returned but failed miserably. They’re called Greenlam Laminates, and the ad is about coffins.

Something about progressive emotions is related to the art of making someone smile. Someone’s smile is always an accurate reflection of a pent up emotion, it’s always a production of a flowing something. That’s why we usually try to make someone smile; we tell them a joke, we hug them from the side, kiss their cheek, coo, giggle or humor a cute pout. We just want to make them smile!

Besides that, a smile is sometimes a direct indication of you being able to hover around a deep secret; or a hidden emotion that you, sometimes unintentionally, arouse. I think that was the case with the tune in that ad. It reverberated something in me. I don’t know what it is!

Same goes with good metaphors, great songs, and beautiful movie scenes. It’s all about the build-up, and then the right moment that follows. Many things just need to take their time. Haste and lack of subtlety ruins everything. We tend to mess up things when we try to imitate songs and movies; we end up with cliched out of context gestures that are more awkward than anything, never original, and very cheesy, but we often insist on them and lose people infinitely.


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There’s another fact that we tend to miss also; those amazing moments come to us only when we stop seeking them. They’re too alive for us to stop living just to watch out for them, if you know what I mean; one usually has to be very busy with life to come across those gifts. You know how sometimes you don’t see the object you stare at, but when you just look about its direction it shines in all clarity? This happens with night stars. Try it. It’s very confounding.

Last but not least, these moments are always wrapped in their own simplicity. They are short, subtle and very simple. They fleet as fast as a deja vu, and they leave your heart lighter that way.

Ever imagined being someone’s deja vu? You’re so home to them you’re both family and adventure at the very same time? How many bullets would you take for your own deja vu person? The one who makes you comfortable just because they make you feel your whole life with them makes that much sense. Like you lived it before!

I have a deja vu person who’s married with three kids. I feel robbed. But that’s another story now.

What I want to talk about are deja vus. I have heard before that they were biologically explained; some kink with our nervous systems, some fired up signals that delude us into living a deja vu that we only discover while it happens. A deja vu is very squirmy, you never predict it, you just look back exactly a fraction of a second later and gasp at how intimate you are with the moment.

I have a belief regarding this awing phenomenon. I look out for deja vu as a reassurance of being on the right track. I have proof to back my theory up: last year I don’t remember ever having a deja vu occurrence. It was the worst year of my life and everything went wrong. This year however had some of the most beautiful ones ever.

I had a sensational deja vu in one of Delhi’s international airport gigantic boarding halls! I was severely shaken! I had that odd feeling that all this happened before, that it’s too familiar, that I’m so coming here again one day, that it’s all going to be alright, that it all is fine and exactly what it’s supposed to be!

I had this born-to-universal-harmony whim to just lie on the carpeted floor and sleep, which I decided not to follow for airport security reasons.

I digressed, did I not?

Let’s get back to some days before departure. I was in the mall with my newly wedded sister shopping for my trip. I had picked her up to check some last items on my list and to finalize the death of my credit card, so to speak.

When a sibling ventures into wedlock, you’ll fail but feel distant from them. A frequency that you both used to click has forever been lost to a third party: their spouse. I’ve always felt it, no matter how my laughs and hers clouded it at times.

If you know me well, you’ll know how bad of a shopper I am. Me and domestic management in general aren’t really the best of friends. That’s why my sister is an essential part of emergency trips like this one. Umm... ok... my sister is pretty much essential in everything in my life. There.

Yesterday I told S at work that I’m expecting from my wife what my three sisters give me at once. She figuratively slapped my forehead and told me that I’ll either have to change that, or stay a bachelor forever. I’m desperately spoiled, and I’m angry when I’m not. Like a baby.

All things in place, item being checked off after the other, ticket and hotel reservations, packing, planning and all, I was in a meeting one morning when S told me to later pass by her desk because she wanted to show me something.


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Days earlier S showed me a pencil sketch that I simply adored. Like the case with many people in software whose life passions never really were in sync with what they were doing for a living, S loved some of them beautiful crafts: gardening, cooking, cartoons and sketches. I always tell her that she should just do something about it. I could sense her fluttering happiness when I reacted to that sketch. I’m well acquainted with what passions do to our souls; how the simple pleasure of doing what you want to do waters all the dry lands of your fatiguing indulgences.

It happened some time ago, also with S, when she made me taste her amazing strawberry cheese cake. Or when I used to lament about my dying plant to her, and how she used to give me advice about how to keep it alive: touch the soil like that, she’d say, feel if it’s this dry, get water and make sure it’s faucet temperature, irrigate around the plant’s stem that way. I observe her closely as she industriously takes care of my green friend, and try to learn.

So I finish my meeting and approach her desk, a bit earlier than she’d wished.

“Come sometime later!” she waved me away.

I still take the remaining two steps and stand trying to guess what she was hiding.

“I said go! I’ll ping you when I’m done,” she orders me.

“I wanna see!” I inquisitively say.

“No! Go!” she ends it.

“Com’on! I’m curious!” I beg. It was hopeless.

“No, I want it to be perfect,” she explains.

Minutes later she comes over and puts it on my desk, a simple beautiful vivid goodbye sketch.

It happened many times that my feminine side was this close to taking over and pushing me to scream ‘awww!’ I always snap back at the right time, because well, I’m a man! I’m an eastern Egyptian maaaan. Men don’t say awwww, do they? Men shouldn’t ever be this soft. It’s... well... revolting to some. In a different world I would have screamed it though. It’s not embarrassing to say this by the way. I have quite some things to be supposedly embarrassed about, but I simply am not. I have a glitch and I’m proud of it.

So I take the sketch in my hands and just watch it.

“You draw. I write.”

“I’m not giving you this to write about.”

“I know. I have to thank you and I’m stupid with words face to face.”

She smiled, “You don’t have to write, Ibraheem, I’m just so glad you liked it.”

“I love it.”

Genealogically speaking, I have three sisters. In my life, I have many. M and A were new acquaintances I made after joining the new project, and then they followed my worries into my own sisters zone when they told me they want to be there. I warned them about how sappy I am, that I have weird issues, that I don’t make sense most of the time, that I... and I...

One night I was the only one left to work late, and when they were leaving I joked about them deserting me alone, and that I need company.

A called me on the way home and told me: “I’m calling because you needed company.”


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As usual, I was tongue tied and didn’t know what to say. My heart breathed in gratitude. It feeds on the brief moments.

A fleeting pat on the heart is beautiful because it has no strings attached, no commitments or responsibilities. It’s a mark that may never happen again, because that’s just what it is. It’s a once upon time moment.

I live in these once upon a times.

An airport for me is a medley of emotions. Same goes with hospitals. They’re both places for saying goodbye or saying welcome. Travel, my friend, is on a wide scheme very similar to the miraculous circle of life. You die to be resurrected later elsewhere in the afterlife just as you travel to emerge elsewhere in another country. I don’t want to sound dark, so I’m also stating that birth itself is just a parallel path; the difference is that it starts from the past. You are conceived at one time in the subconscious of this world and then you emerge a screaming infant fresh out of your bearer.

I have many stories in hospitals that can fill many blogs. My airport reminiscences stretch back into my childhood years, with us living abroad and all, and they weave with the very fabric of my idea of home. From my undying love to the city of Riyadh, to our painful goodbyes to relatives every year back. The creaks of baggage wheels, the faces of expats, and the taste of airport food are all things that were once part of my life.

This is why saying goodbye to my own family this time had its share of drama. It was an odd arrangement that my sister left exactly two weeks before my departure. Our home was still convalescing from the wedding, when I was just hours away from my airport ride. My two younger sisters weren’t really ready for that, especially the youngest one. With my step Mom away for the month (for family reasons), they were going to have to make do with three members of the house. We were kind of severed in half.

I was dressed up and all prepared. I towed my luggage to the elevator, and stood by the house door to goodbye. My dad and youngest sister were driving me there, so this time I only had to say goodbye to Marwa and Ghada. Marwa’s hug was like a comma in the sentence of this Friday, it was as if our famous moment fresh out of her wedding had taken more than its share of emotions and left us all grown up and strong. I hugged her fast and candid, and the hug had to it some easing questions about me not forgetting bla and bla, to take care of myself and call when I’m there safe.

Ghadghood’s hug, however, was kind of a period. She had been trying to hold back tears for quite a while now, with a very struggling smile that got tired from the heaviness of the load. When she was finally in my arms, her smile gave in and sobs followed, rather flowed. She turned on her cute lisp – her way to console herself and turn sadness into happiness, and told me that she’ll miss me. They were only three weeks, but my sister dropped that detail completely.

To tell you the truth, I too dropped it. I kind of lost it in the bathroom minutes before the above happened. It was the strangest thing. I realized that if Marwa glued us together, then I was there somehow holding all of us around! I could strongly feel it. I was relied on just for the mere presence of me. I am my family’s emotional battery. I make their lives easier. I don’t know how, or why, but I do.

It’s one hell of a huge responsibility. Safaa’s image dawned upon me because her peace feeds on my existence the most, and then tears swiftly washed the picture. Like I told you, travel is like death, it makes you realize things, see them in their true essence. Death brings those things that your detours threw out of context right back in their place. You suddenly see the important things, and deride the stupid little annoyances, not for their nature, rather for what they made you miss. It was all like putting on spectacles for the first time.


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And just as if I was too special for it, I started making promises to myself. When I’m back, I’ll do this and that. When I’m back, I’ll be a better brother, and a better son. When I’m back, I’ll be different.

You wish, Ibhog.

Something with wanting to change your life is too similar to how you want to escape addiction, or to flee a sordid sin. You break your everyday promise, with the rest of the heart you left in it.

Sometimes, Safaa sits with me to breakfast in utter silence. I am usually too busy in the head to engage her in any kind of conversation. She asks a question and I don’t respond. She makes a joke and I don’t laugh. But in spite of that stupid tough shell I don at times, my sister still loves me. She loves me for me.

I shift an inch in my chair and she jumps: “Where are you going?”

“I’ll go wash my teeth and dress up for work!”

“Sit with me a little longer, please?”

Crap, this is sad.

My sister brings me green tea to my room. She puts the mug and for a millisecond she waits.

I grab her chin, and kiss her cheek.

I sometimes hate how good I am at detecting others’ anticipation.

Dad drove me to the airport in the blistering noon of Saturday the 11th of June. Plane was going to take off around 4pm. The journey was fairly silent and just hot. I don’t remember anything interesting that can be told except for that fact itself, or maybe my liking of the colorful boards on both sides of the road leading to Cairo’s airport entrance, having quotes for world leaders about the great Egyptian revolution. Oh, and dad calling a friend of his who’s a senior security officer to ask him about directions regarding the terminal.

And finally, the fact that I was inundated with a peculiar feeling: who’s going to miss me?

You know what’s the most powerful feature of this universe? Life moves on. This is the strongest and most dominant fact of all. It’s the oldest rule ever. God had created this world to keep going on, no matter how at times we’re deluded into seeing it stop. It will never stop. As long as the sun rises, and as long as time is soldiering on like a Victorian knight clad in armor towards the castle of whatever God wills, life will forever, steadily, slowly, calmly, sometimes imperceptibly, move on. I felt insignificant as an eyelash. I felt as useless as a rooted desire to take some word back. My heart was about to decease before the question of its own purpose.

What the hell am I doing to make any difference? I’m one of the billions of life’s wave riders. I seek attention every now and then to give myself the illusion. I boast my eloquence and then later get disgusted at it.

What am I living for exactly?

I’m sad to say that this uncouth crisis of faith wedged itself in mostly all the hours of my trip. It started before I even took off. It was very similar to many a ‘what then’ wish granted moments. Its bitterness like a sticky odor.

We arrived at the airport and I lugged my heavy bag towards the gate, and the sequel of goodbyes was in production. I greeted my old man in the way I greet him when he’s back from


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work on a very typical day. Maybe I lingered in his arms longer for courtesy, but our goodbye was practical enough. I don’t think me and dad ever had waterworks intercede in a hug except for one time back in secondary school when my grades narrowed his tear ducts. It was a happy moment. Sort of.

Then came Safaa’s turn. A twinge of pain shot from an invisible corner of my body up my spine all the way to the center of my chest when I took her in my arms. Neither of us cried. Safaa is a strong little creature. Her strength, instead of giving me patience, melts me down. There’s breathless struggle somewhere in her now teenage world, voiceless and too constant. Every time I go down the lane of such a thought, I get overly hurt. I question the level of my sacrifice. Will I have to one day borrow my life for her?

My stuff got x-rayed and I stayed waiting for Ahmed to join me. When he finally arrived, we checked in our baggage. Mine stood on the balance sharply at the weight limit! I remembered how last night I kept measuring weight, checking the airline website for penalties, and actually preparing money. Essam raised a brow in astonishment when the digits fired up and stopped right at the maximum limit allowed, like a polite student. I made a mental note of telling Marwa because she’s the one who stood for hours perfecting my things.

We followed through passports and then we stayed in a restaurant near the boarding hall. We ordered, talked about books for a while, then prayed before getting on the plane.

Things happened fast. Safaa texted me a prayer. I sat cozily by the window over the aircraft’s left wing, catching the very familiar, pressed scent of an airplane’s inside. I watched Egyptian travelers. I checked a magazine. I adjusted the novel that I never opened during the flight in the seat pocket.

The plane was taking off when I was making a final mental check over the past hours, as if I’d be able to fix anything I missed. The air thickened in my ears as we rose, and my heart held on to my lungs. Egypt kept getting smaller and smaller until the clouds blanketed it.

Three hours, a meal and an incomplete movie later we landed in Abu Dhabi.

Cloaked in my memories is the somehow eclipsed scene of us venturing out of the airport’s gate in Riyadh during one summer to get slapped by the night’s dry, blazing heat that was more home to us than Cairo’s finest breeze. I remember in clips how a driver of a luxurious family van picked us up and drove us after midnight to our suburban neighborhood. I recall how my uncle had the apartment ACed before I unlocked the door and entered to a much more spacious house than the version that Egyptian life narrowed in my mind. I particularly loved that feeling we had when we were finally settled in, back home, back to norm and back to form.

Something similar to the above dash submerged me the moment we approached Abu Dhabi. I think maybe the Gulf with all its countries is the same after all. I trace the emotion to up in the air when I kept watching the city’s houses from above, confined in their own blocks, exuding calm and peace, and just screaming: come. I instantly felt better. In what way? I don’t know. I just am perfectly sure that this sight alone elated a part of me that was stagnant in place for a painfully long time. It was like breathing into old lungs that stretched in happy ailment, or like drinking water so cool you feel it reach your arms.

It was oddly unsettling; walking down the very long aisles I kept eying the arrivals’ gates and was genuinely sad I was instead heading for transfers. I deeply envied the Egyptian bride and groom who were literally having their future ahead as a spotless white sheet. She was standing in the bus that we rode from the plane to the entrance in a black Abaya that’s modesty is by far a


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summit in the world of beauty, besides, or rather under, the wings of her protective, yet imperceptibly ecstatic husband. I caught her eye, and she caught mine. I would have looked away in respect, but I didn’t. She didn’t take offense; I knew it because I wasn’t staring; I was rather wishing her the best, and I know in my heart she knew I did. A smile was euphorically rising on her face when subtlety consumed its time and I had to divert my gaze. This image is not planning to leave my head any year near.

The aisle that tubed us arced itself into an artistic left that descended gently to the outskirts of a transfers counter with a very neat Indian clerk who informed us about the right terminal. Behind him we resumed our stroll and took a right that itself was a second tube, all white fluorescent, and all carpeted you could glide along. We walked and walked until my back ached from my laptop bag. A second counter rescued our panting when we were informed that the final passage was a 3 minute walk in a somewhat bridge crossing left from our exhausted lane, and literally popping a gigantic sphere abuzz with people; its circle a mixture of airline offices and terminal gates, and its heart a hole that displayed the floor below alive with shops, malls, people and again aisles stretching like veins under the sphere and apparently connecting to other numerous, similar airport organs.

This walk was a pleasure of a rare nature. It was not a blur. It was not dreamy. It was simply nice. It was heartwarming. Like when you turn on the radio to your favorite song. Or when the one you love utters the same sentence you’re saying in the type of sync that couldn’t work planned. It was like rain popping on the window around 2am with you awake under the covers on happy pillows, deep in conversation with a soulmate.

It was a moment that you can’t fully enjoy because of how its shortness saddens you.

The airline counter clerk this time told us that our flight to Mumbai, which was supposed to take off around 10pm, was delayed.

Indefinitely.

A boarding hall is a gallery of people. I loved how no one was a show off like when you’re shopping in a big mall. Just normal unpretentious people minding their own business, naturally tired and candidly sleepy.

I have a soft spot for women who never had the time to perfect the way they look, I love how that gives way to what’s left of their raw beauty, always suffocated under cosmetic pressure. Her hair is disheveled. Her smile is thriving under a knitted forehead – knitted by strings attached to a heavy backpack at times, or to a young daughter who only talks in screams. Her outfit is wrinkled and just out of place. She is herself.

I just like how life’s imperfection is simply perfect at times. God engineered his creation that greatly if you think about it.

Ahmed and I retired to a row of chairs directly facing the counter. We had to throw away our baggage because our spines started to give in. We checked the airline’s website online, and it confirmed that indeed we’re delayed. The problem was that we were having a next connection from Mumbai by 5am the next day. When we asked if a reschedule to that is in order we weren’t really given a definite answer. We could stay hours inside this kinky sphere doing nothing.

We took turns to the restrooms for baggage watch. After that we circled the inner hole. The thick line that separated this view from the sphere’s circumference was a cafe squatting over a sheet of chairs in two types: normal and small with straight up backs and long recliner-like seats. During our loiter, a mother was looking for the comfortable type and as soon as she spotted four she called


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on her husband and two kids. As soon as they joined, the four occupied the seats, divided in two sets back to back. They immediately stretched in complete silence and dosed off.

The boarding spaces were colored with people from around the world. This gate had Caucasian and that gate had Asian. Arabs were here and Indians were there. We had lapped twice before we descended to the mosque downstairs for prayers. After that we went upstairs again to look for some lounge a bridge-cross farther from the circle, but upon finding out that it was expensive, we returned to the cafe and ordered turkey and cheese. Ahmed had coffee and narrated to me the accounts of his trip to Poland last year.

A blonde British angel haloed a nearby booth. A couple of German gals feminized the one across, and I inhaled every detail. In this trip, I don’t think I watched anything more closely than women. This is usually perceived as a perverted statement. It maybe is and maybe isn’t. I understand though, that if I wrote about how a beautiful girl was laughing at the movie she’s watching on her iPad while she lays back barefoot on that oblong seat, exactly as if it’s her own sofa on a Thursday night, then it might sound perverted.

It’s just that I enjoy how strongly I identify with their nature, women. Its unrefined, pure essence. The unguarded version of their whims, and the home of their sleeping souls. More than one time I wished I was a painter in this trip.

A girl is most charming when no one is watching her. Under eyes she reforms, and loses my interest.

My smiles a galaxy in active orbit, surrounding the entire sphere. I leave marks as I walk. If a sigh escaped the confines my admiration, it is still hovering there now as we speak. If a girl giggles candidly, my notion of conquest is redefined. If she cries, I fantasize, then the notion flaps its wings in preparation.

I digressed again.

The line of my thoughts, and the stream of our conversation were ruthlessly severed by the inquisitive questions of two patrolling officers who landed on our raw.

“Are you flying to Mumbai?”

“Yes”

“Did you guys check in?”

“No. We checked the boards. Flight is still in thirty minutes.” During my daydream of five hours, we knew about new schedules.

“Well, if you’re not planning to stay the night in this airport, you better get up now and hurry before you miss your flight,” they said exasperatedly.

We were a tad flummoxed. We fled to the counter to check in. It was very empty. Frankly, the clamor two hours ago was our very flight, and we mistakenly thought it wasn’t. The guy, who thanks to our luck was Egyptian, politely scorned our ignorance. He told us that he only knew about us because luggage control downstairs reported missing passengers and was not able to commit the transfer of our stuff. Mr Hamdi and Mr Essam did not check in on this flight.

They actually had to look around for us!

We stood there quite dumbfounded. It was confusing and funny really. We were going to miss two flights just like that! We told him that we kept asking about details the previous hours, and that


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we thought checking in will be done at boarding time anyway. The guy sarcastically remarked that how on earth can one board without having passes?

He was right honestly.

That moment I felt something weird. I felt that there’s a prayer somewhere acting as a guardian. I tried to recollect dad’s calls to the sky, and my sister’s wishes; but this came to me as something stronger.

I smiled realizing that God simply wants this to work, because that’s the best for us.

We were now standing in a diminishing queue among Indians with our freshly printed boarding passes looking foreign as ever. Part of me grieved the end of my stay here. The line kept getting smaller, the smell turned seas away rumors into concrete reality. We were approaching the gate and I prayed inside the temple of my heart for God to make everything okay.

My alarm goes off. My head rises and I remove my ear plugs; it’s quite calm in a hotel room, but a habit at something overpowers the need for it. I get up and feel the carpeting with my toes, the conditioned air chills me and its sound is comforting. It was pitch black even though it was seven in the morning. I blindly wander to the window curtains and flap them open, and the clouded sun hits my squint. It’s either raining in India, or drying after rain. The railway station was waking up and feasting on tiny moving humans, with tiny luggage.

I breathe a depth of me and lumber to the bathroom. The marble is thinly cold and it smells of excessive cleanliness, with no scent of home whatsoever. I wash my face and go out to the hotel closet to pick my outfit. It’s thought to be an adventurous day, and I needed something sporty and comfortable. I spend time ruling out sneakers and polo shirts, before I go for the top with the most memories. It’s like clothes have ranks, and it’s so unfair how the ones with the highest veto others in outings.

I dress up tiredly and slowly, and I hate my hair. The overly cushioned bed in this hotel makes the sink of one’s head in its cold pillows a mildly grave insult to the form of one’s hair. There’s always a touch of imperfection there. It’s annoying. So, I try to beseech the rebellious tress with my brush, sometimes up and sometimes down for some minutes, until it lulls me into acceptance with its tenacity.

My friend a floor higher must have woken up too. It’s close to eight by now, and I give him a call. I have a post-it pasted to my desk’s mirror because I always forget his room extension. He picks up and asks for 10 minutes. I surrender to the cushioned chair, guarded by a glassy round table topped by two apples so zesty red. I give in to morning fatigue and let my eyes close. I’m attracted to my unfinished novel, but I yawn it away.

Months later from those warm moments a friend tells me that she enjoyed my Indian trip journals more when I didn’t just narrate the events in the boring sequence of them, but rather when I had bestowed my imaginative feelings upon them. And so it happened that this moment in the future has somehow beckoned to its sister in the past of my now, and planted such ideas of romance, happiness and refreshing insanity.

I’m basically a walking novel plot creator, and an emotional reactor. I’ve watched movies when all what the authors wanted us to know was how strangers fall in love on airplanes and in foreign countries. It’s so unearthed to me, how strange people are safer than what our parents once thought. It also appeals to my sense of beauty, how the very art of pauses blooms with people you shall never really see again. Do you know what the art of pauses is? It’s when a moment in your life is worth more than your lifetime; it’s when a day with someone teaches you about the world, more than what has exhausted you for years in study.


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So I ponder what if. As usual. What if I met someone here and went on an adventure with them?

What if she was a she, and what if, she was the she? Ah.

Let’s go on.

My elevator ride with its proud musical pieces descends with me to the hotel’s restaurant. By now, the chef only needs to see us enter before he could prepare our cheese omelet; it doesn’t usually happen that you should stay in such a damp city for three weeks. He’s a very dexterous guy; the way he handles his eggs, so delicately and perfectly, reminds me of those rare moments in the world when someone loves, even for a day, what they do for a living. Anyway, we take rounds to fill on toast bread and spread-cheese; I pick up my smoked salmon and pancakes. My friend pours his juice and we are then served our delicious, hot omelets. We devour our breakfast, but in the continental way; the way everyone here inspects food as if it was design apparel, and the way a woman circles the buffet with her exquisite sandals and Indian henna, and where gentlemen eat with tucked shirts and suffocating ties, and then we sweet things with fresh pastries, tea and coffee. The tasseled bill comes, and we record our attendance, and leave back to our rooms.

How poetic would you want me to be? After all, is not a charming word the daughter of its utterer’s tone and love of eyes? Is not a metaphor half the work of luck, and then half the art of chance? One’s prose isn’t one’s, it’s God’s. A storyteller should be at peace with this fact: a good story is only so because of how the universe chose to direct the course it’s told.

And how thrilling would it be if what you think are fictional people touched you deeper than they’re thought to? How fictional would that really make them? How deceived are we by the power of imagination? What if I created someone, right now, right this very second, when you’re reading this very sentence, that would venture into your room – yes, your real room, whether you’re reading this on top of a chair, or under a quilt in the dreamy dark of you, and then they just kissed you? I can do that. I can touch your face with my words. That’s how real imagination is. Watch your heartbeat and tell me.

In India, a hill station is a place high up on a mountain that people go to on weekends and vacations. My friend and I were recommended Mahabaleshwar – a village that’s four thousand feet into the sky! That morning, we were supposed to ride up there. The driver has arrived. I was brushing my teeth when the reception called and told me that my airport ride has arrived, only it was not my airport ride, you perfect hotel staff, and no, no one needs to go up to my room and retrieve my luggage. I quickly take my vitamins, make sure I have water, some biscuits, a newspaper maybe, and then down I flew again to the parking lot.

The sun has concluded overture, and the maiden breeze was dancing and singing, birds were chirping ovation, and my spirits watched in euphoria. I was some worlds away, and I was simply excited. The driver was a really old man, with teeth that are tired of years and with English that just survives. We rode the Previa, and sat cozily in the back on stretch after we threw our umbrellas behind us, and the moment we positioned our water bottles in their designed posh slots, he took off. The streets were empty, and the green colors were just so vivid. My friend told me that he never knew such green existed before. The van glided through the city, and I kept watching early risers; great laborers or rich trippers. I saw Saris on motorcycles with undulating hair, and men who ran after buses, not lazily, rather eagerly.

And we go...

Ibhog, July 5 - November 7, 2011


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Do not distract, just be there

I hate distractions, they give false hope, they taste like disappointment when you savor the last sip. The moment I strap back to her, reality, she gives me a cold slap, drowns me in a stall full of ice cubes and tells me that he, hope, had a plane crash and was lost in the wreckage, like all the ones who once thought they had him.

I don’t want distractions. I want solutions. Because the tears you don’t see,

they burn like acid.

Ibhog, February 10, 2010


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Rants I

Dad just called me from the living room. I lumber over to him. He then asks me about the movie showing. Johny Depp, Huffman – oh, it’s Finding Neverland.

Two years ago my aunt was sleeping over at our house and I let her watch that movie. I was in my room, inside my drafts section to be accurate, when a knock on the door beckoned my head to her swollen face, drowned in tears, telling me: “Why didn’t you tell me it’s gonna end this way?!”

Oh how long have I spent in you, you miserable drafts section?

My words are broken. It’s like they were stuffed tight in a box that was thrown from a high place; the blow affected their quality forever. They’re haggard, and full of seams. Sentences end in loose threads. Feelings in thin air. And because they had been strewn on the road, you could find soil in meanings, and dust that you could blow off expressions. The mishaps that are my writing attempts have finessed themselves; words are too squirmy. It’s like I’m fighting fate, if you know how that feels.

Fighting fate feels like trying so slowly to go through a wall. There.

I’m tired of knowing in people’s airs what they don’t know yet they’re feeling. I’m even more tired of them denying their feelings at the end, when they find out I could read them that well.

A month ago I was sitting at work, or slumbering in a daydream, when a tune hit my thinking. It was from a movie. I didn’t recall any word, just the tune. So I went to google and wrote: “The song the detective in V for Vendetta was having on his alarm clock,” or something on that line. I don’t remember.

To my surprise, someone cared enough to share this kind of information. I rarely listen to music nowadays, but this one expressed some.

I’m too afraid these days. I’m so afraid I’ll end up repeating my mistakes. I’m slowly fading out of my new perspectives. It’s most horrible really. I don’t know what to do. It feels like a moodlock, if that’s even a word.

And nothing is easier growing up. Insanity with years is far more dangerous. I’ve always been young and wishing to jump to the end of my twenties; that’s not how I feel now. Amazingly enough, I wish I could go back to school again these days.

“It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better… while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.” - Woody Allen

This stupid blog...

Keep doing that to me, and I’ll end up closing the heck out of you again. I don’t care. I will suffocate the words until they breathe no more, I shall squash them with soles of reality, and I shall


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bury them in the abyss of their own misery. After I hear the crack of my own break, I shall disinter their corpses and use them again in all sickness, just like I’m doing now.

Oh wail. Herald thy doom. Stab thy existence with the poisonous sword of your own mind.

Ibhog. I even hate the name.



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Rants – II

Why is it that the longer you are away from books, the harder it gets for you to return to them again? I thought I loved reading. I remember my last two winters, they had a lot of reading. I remember I once read To Kill a Mocking Bird in one day. Yes, I woke up, had breakfast, opened the novel, and finished it around midnight. It was such a nice weekend. I feel like I want to do that again. I want to devour a book. I miss it. I miss how sentences flow, I miss how nicely written paragraphs used to complement my breathing. I want to get warm in a cold night with a book.

I’m starting to not like my addiction to my archive. Also I hate the way I write these days. I could discern some differences between my style now and that of before. It’s like it primed at a time and then sagged at another. Scenes suffocate me. During the last holiday, I was in that mall that had a very big fountain; it was designed in a way that would make water dance and color on the rhythm of played songs. It was such a huge space, with so many spectators. I remember this night quite well. I remember how I wanted to sum up all of it in one sentence, and being very close to make that happen.

This wish visited me today again, but in a weak shade of it. In the form of a wish that got bored of itself. Like love that dies without romance. Like mundane things. Like a friendship that suddenly stopped answering the purpose of it. Like when you don’t miss someone anymore. Like my life. I wished I could write about today, and all those people I love. And it hit me: then what? My purpose thrives under each day I grow up to live. My life literally feeds on the remains of my dream.

So I do it again, I run to my past. I run to the vivid that was once my written word. I seek refuge in a moment I once drew with my pain, or in a laugh I once echoed with my sentences. How far can someone change? I wonder. They’re all realms of consciousness, and I swim from this one into that one. Like river to sea. Then like sea to ocean. And then like ocean to shore. And I eye life there and there, and I watch those beings who’re oblivious of their neighbor worlds. I’m rich that way, as someone once pointed out.

I go to sleep. On the pillow, it begins. Tomorrow, I’ll start working on what idea. Regret. Why didn’t I do that today? I was relatively free. It’s the mood. I don’t have energy. It’s such a tiring thought. I work for such long hours! I sleep unsettled. I wake up. I rise from the magnet that’s my bed, carrying sand. I don’t want to stretch. I dangle my feet. I feel the carpeting with my toes. I watch the white slit below my room’s door. Like a time portal. A journey starts and spends three walking feet. I open the door. Cold slaps me. Quiet swallows me. House is too speechless. I think. I wonder. I resolute. I won’t work on the what idea today. I’m still tired.

And then it happens all over again on the same bored pillow. I’m on repeat. I’m on repeat. I’m on repeat.

Good night.

Ibhog, December 3, 2011


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My Best Wishes

This just in. I was watching a Friends episode, and I had just finished my third cup of green tea – green tea calms me down, and sometimes one mug wouldn’t just do, so – and I... I don’t know... like had the episode’s plot cast on the reel of my life in a twisted way I hate.

Anyways, credits rolled and I went to check facebook. A status update followed by a comment followed by a curious mouse click inspired this very post. I deliberately stumbled upon the profile of one of my classmates. She was holding her little baby and was smiling to the camera.

I wish I can have this, I thought. Exactly this. I don’t know if it’s the photo I want with its unattached strings, or the dream of a family of my own; whether a moment in time stripped of all sufferings before or after is better than a family that has gotten so strong in spite of them.

Tears welled up. I deserve this, I just do and I just know it.

I kept looking at the picture, my smile an arc that carried my bleary wishes.

I prayed for her and the baby and wrote this post.



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On life stories...

The movie Pursuit of Happyness, when credits opened and when they rolled, did you notice that all names were not capitalized? Part of why this movie is such a masterpiece is how simple and profound it was. All names were written in small characters because that’s how insignificant we are before our pursuit of whatever it is that we want. I guess.

I’m wondering now, after I read a four thousand words draft that I’ll probably never publish, about what would urge anyone to write the story of their life. I might post excerpts from this utterly personal draft, which was some sort of a letter sent over a year ago. It was a courageous attempt at explaining who exactly I was; I look back now, and see that one shouldn’t really explain who they are, but rather be who they are! And it hits me, am I really myself? I have this simple test: if you sleep well, then you’re yourself. Dead simple.

Anyways.

What would be the good reason for one to write the story of their life? Maybe they want to show off something, or want to be famous? You see, professing that one is really not interested in fame is like saying that someone loves to die. It doesn’t make sense. However, just like some really love to die, some really don’t want appearance.

I think I know of other motives to author one’s own story; it’s so that they could read it! Yes! Did it ever occur to you that someone’s life is such a unique experience that they would be their own biggest fan? It’s not out of loving one’s life per se, it’s rather out of loving how rich it was. How can one cherish their misfortunes? How can one find peace when they know for a fact that part of them is irrevocably broken? Truth is some really do that. All drama aside, really, I think it’s attainable, this sense of inner peace. You know why? Because we all have felt it at times, in those very quick moments of total submission to this universe and complete surrender to its well-being. Some of us at least once, truly and deeply and most sincerely, believed that it really is going to be all all all … okay.

The trick is: we want to harness these moments. We want to summon them! I have written before that the likes of them come unsought, free gifts of this universe; they do come to you when you’re simply busy fulfilling whoever you’re destined to be. The second you decide to stop and look back, you lose these moments forever. They cease. These moments come to those in onward journey, not to those in sad reminiscence. It’s so similar to any boy and girl trying to make of romance what it simply can’t provide anymore; when they fail to realize that it’s time to move on, either part or be together in marriage. You see, life needs to move.

Sometimes, one’s life is so rich they don’t really need to be talented writers to show it to the world. Many wrote only one book, the book of their life, after they lived it. The oneness of some feelings, borne by the mystery that’s intertwined fates and events, is always so novel in its beauty and unprecedented in its nature. Life’s prolific this way, and one finds it really hard to hold so much animation inside.

I’m addicted to storytelling because of my stories, not because of my telling. The narratives that fly out of someone’s smile or someone’s tears always strive to be told. It’s like a flower that stretches its petals for the world to see.


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You see, some things have a will of their own. This life’s beauty knows how to show itself, and even if a writer is lazy or is barred by what heaviness, beauty will forever be in his company, it’ll form inside his chest until he either tells it in prose in a conversation, or if not, until it crushes him forever.

The tendency to tell is just this life wanting to be told, not people who want to charm. And life picks its stories teller, just like it chooses the ones who are part of them.

And the lucky ones are those who satisfy both of life’s wishes.



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I remember your smile. I have spent ages trying to decipher the wrinkle on one side, and the anticipation painted on the other. I have spent entire lifetimes attempting to know how much it did really take of you to actually smile, while you knew, as well as I did, that you were to pass away. Am I going to be special, I ask

myself. Are wonders waiting for me, I fantasize. Did she see a vision, the future, I apostrophe.

Why were you smiling, Mom? I’m dying to know.


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Memories of Mom

How unsettling is spare time. How annoying are things that wish to be done. How un-peaceful of moments. I can’t have an hour of calm solitude, or enjoy a real touch of carefree. How can someone be so trapped by their chores of a dream?

I collect myself from around a boring movie or a depressing newspaper. I welcome my visiting sister into my room to practice our yearly habit around the start of winter. She takes care of my closets and she usually does the season switch. I try to focus with her, but I’m locked in front of this screen, trying to be famous. She picks a top and asks me if I’m going to wear it this winter.

“I lost a lot of weight, I don’t think this will look good on me anymore,” I say.

“Okay, what about these pants? They’re corduroy and they’re so good!” I tap them with my fingers and tell her that they’re too wide at the hems. I don’t want them. I wore them only once. Last year. Or the year before. Don’t remember. Don’t really want to.

Sometimes the future for me is an endless plain that’s either colorless or too gray. And at times, when my spastic colon hurts overly, I think of death and suddenly the future seems too crippled before my spirits.

I had that dream a while ago, about my Mom. It was a peculiar dream, she wasn’t really my Mom in it. It’s like I had the wrong ancestors my whole life, and I only knew about my real ones now. My sisters weren’t even my sisters anymore. My feelings in that clip of time had a sense of closure avidly bound to utter sadness. My vision had a prologue of roaring lions and sky flying, and then of landing into narrow tunnels and of breaths cut short. It was wild as a nightmare and more vivid than vague.

My prospects at moments fade away behind the visage of them and I’m left in dimensions. I wilt in bed now after an indulgence or a feigned emotion I grew accustomed to not fight. How can pleasure have so much poison in this life? I’m left abashed and I’m lost. And then it hits me again, that plain without birth and of no end.

It’s foggy. The air is thin, and I just. I just want to go to God.

Yes.

I just kissed my sister goodbye. I told her before: we all laugh more when she visits, every time. May God protect her.

Today, after prayers. I was discussing with my father about feast sacrifices, and I was thinking about my neglected beard. I would have to wait until the day comes. It will be the disheveled version of me. And the strangest thing happened. Dad called the man we know. A great man. A shepherd of sorts, but a respectable teacher, and father to my sister’s friend. His son picked up this year.

The man died under a falling tree a month ago. He was in fast. It wasn’t a good death, but it was his time. I was stunned in a way. How can someone die under a falling tree? Do leaves, that I most love, kill? We woke my sister up so that she would console her friend and she cried. My sister smiles when she cries. She also blushes. They’re all emotions that have the same father anyway. His son told us that they still sell sheep, because life goes on. Even when people die under worn trees, or


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get hit by frantic truck drivers. It goes on and on, until it meets its Creator, and then all peace and justice would prevail.

And those who laugh, would then laugh forever.

I know the post’s title is misleading. I’m too tired to change it now and I wanted to talk about my Mom. I want to talk about our mornings, and about our nights. There’s this dying wish in me to tell the world about her, not only because of how great this woman is, but because it gives me my sense of belonging. It urges people to accept me more, and judge me less. They love her, instantly.

I pray behind my grandfather, her father, and after prayers, I kiss his hand and think: if this man dies I will be uprooted for eternity. I will have to sift through my existence for the traces of the greatness that is her and him. I would find them and I would be happy. But then I would be sad because I would then have to infinitely protect those traces.

In this awful world.

And then pass them on, through the womb I’m still searching for.

It shall be the conquest of us.

And that’s all if he dies before me.



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Marwa

I read once that to writing a character does more justice than does a good story. A character is the start of something great, always.

I don’t know where to start about my sister Marwa. There’s so much stuff jostled inside my chest I can’t even breathe. And I don’t know why memories tend to somehow summon hordes and strike when I’m most vulnerable. It’s such a painful thing.

I was sitting in a meeting room last Thursday when a colleague stood by the door and told me that she can’t believe I have it in me to work that late when my sister was leaving for her honeymoon in a few hours. After telling her that it wasn’t really about being careless as much as it was about finding escape, she became a tad pensive, and told me: “I should’ve known.”

I do not process my feelings well out loud. Even if the one who’s receiving is just one other. I blurt out meaningless sentences, with shocks of great eloquence inside these sentences, out of rhythm and a bit peculiar. I end up touching them with my body language, with my voice tone and with how my eyes flick and blink and frown. It’s innate and I hate it. I hate how I love it when people remember me later in the day.

Yesterday’s night I was up in Marwa’s new apartment, getting her and her husband dinner. I drove with them that night, and it rained, and she was happy, and that’s all I could really ask for. I took the time to watch the house, the new furniture, everything was gorgeous and great. When it was time to leave I hugged her.

It was a very long hug. It was one of those hugs that get tighter midway, as if you walk inside the one you’re hugging, you adjust the music of your bodies and suddenly they intertwine better, as if some space emerged from nowhere and you both just had to fill it at once.

We both cried. She was still in her wedding dress. She told me to visit, and I told her that I’m around if she needed me. And that was it. I drove home, changed, showered, ate and rested all with the company of tears.

The next morning I woke up a bit refreshed, but I was daunted very quickly with the realization of yesterday and was depressed in seconds. The thing is, I feel like I’m out of control. I find it very hard to articulate, but you know when someone you love suddenly leaves you, you usually end up bleeding, you miss them so much as if it’s been years even though you were just with them. Most importantly, it’s that blocking state of: I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to do. I’m not able to decide what the next five minutes should be like. I move very carefully so that I don’t land in some corner of the house that has a memory lodged deviously inside. Even my thinking pattern got sharper, too conscious of itself. I was under the shower squirting shower gel, when I remembered that Marwa was the one who always remembered we were out of shower gel, and just like that I cried.

I was lying in bed and I caught the word at the cliff of my mouth, I was just going to call on her for dinner. Habit is usually faster, and just like that, I slapped my forehead because for me it was like: oh dear God, here we go again.

I enter the kitchen and get bombarded with images and moments and laughs and fights and arguments and everything else in between. A war waged from the top shelves, arrows shot with


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dexterous bows, right through me. It was disastrous. I sit on twitter and fail, as always, to persuade myself with this world. I open facebook just to close it. Everything is lifeless. Everything is colorless, mute and just out of order.

They say after denial there’s anger. It’s very true. I blame my sister inside my head all the time for that horrible crime she did. How could she leave us like that? She’s too freaking young! Doesn’t she know that I can’t live without her? I swear to God, this is not some sort of dramatic statement. It’s a fact true as the sun. I just can’t! How could she?!

But then I remember how happy she was that day. I remember how they told me she danced so hard she practically fell. I remember looking at her in the rear view mirror, clad in white and swimming in its bush. And, my God, she was so beautiful. I’m proud I have such a beautiful sister.

At the wedding I walked among all the spectators to the shrine, climbed the stage, kissed my sister and simply got back to where I stood. It was fast and normal. No scene. As if we had been rehearsing for some other wedding.

Like I told you, I don’t process feelings well. When I’m alone, I either cry, or if I could summon it, I write.

I will miss you, Marwa, so very freaking much.

Ibhog, May 28, 2011


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Marwa & Mom

Marwa is my elder sister. I usually make the impression that she’s older than me despite the fact she’s a year younger. 13 months and 27 days younger than me to be exact. When we were little kids, my uncle used to say: “Marwa is socially intelligent, Ibraheem is intellectually intelligent,” not to be taken for granted, but the correctness of the claim was proven along the years with me outnumbering her in terms of study and grades, and with her overpowering me in social life.

Let me start with our early days. We used to live in KSA, in fact, our entire childhood was spent there, in Riyadh. We changed houses about four times in the city, each of the movements being a standalone adventure with the sis, as we always managed to build small cottages out of domestic boxes, and until now we enjoy reminiscing about it. Marwa used to be the conniving little creature of the two of us, her cunning nature and utterly guarded eyes made me actually appear helplessly stupid before many parties, including the parents. I managed to strike the balance in studying of course, but when it comes to trickery, sneaking around the house, playing games (and by that I mean dangerous endeavors that are forbidden to little kids generally), she quite KO’d me most of the time.

When we make a mess out of the house and then Mom walks in with furious looks, Marwa always managed to disappear from the crime scene, leaving me totally victimized; even worse, forensic evidence was never at my side, because believe it or not, I was a tool, she sometimes just tells me what to do, I do it, we make the hell of a mess, she disappears, I get blamed, she smirks and laughs and I lose yet another point in domestic sovereignty. Heck. And because I was the man, at least that’s what they used to call me to lift my spirits, I sometimes turned to fierce bickering, which worked only temporarily.

Pathetic enough, she knew ways to get back at me, though usually unintentionally, but if we’re talking vengeance and violence, let me narrate to you the ‘Scissors Tale.’ Oh yes you just heard that, and this unequivocally means blood. I mean seriously? I was 5 and she was 4, and the story had scissors? What are the odds?! We were in bed, with our toys all over the place as usual, but on this specific day, I don’t know how we managed to get a hold of small scissors, and because we either took the word ‘surgeon’ in English class or we saw a movie with a hospital scene, we wanted to try out that surgical operation thing.

Though unplanned but destiny was liking the game, and we found the sheet below our butts to be white. You can’t find better direction for the scene, and because I chose (not sure of that by the way) to be the patient, I rolled my hands totally in the sheet to fake a wound, and she was impersonating the doctor. Can you guess what happened next?

I pretended to be in pain, she made a stern face, and although the plot was for her to cut THE FREAKING SHEET, she somehow extended it to the teeny tiny flesh between my thumb and index fingers, cutting it directly in two halves.

Do you know what a placebo effect is? I could swear I did not feel any pain, until the moment the sheet started to have growing red stains all over it, and the dynamism of those large red spots made me curious (and her too actually), so I unrolled the sheet from around my hand, and with each roll the stains became strangely darker and wetter. Well, it didn’t take long until I screamed out of horror, because the hand was gushing blood like crazy, my sister and though she was shocked too,


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still contrived a well-planned escape with the ulterior motive of “I’m getting Mama, wait here.” Mom got here, Marwa disappeared, and I got to see the face of a real surgeon that night. We had many similar incidents.

We had an IBM machine when we were at primary school, I recall that dad purchased it for 6 thousands S.R which was quite expensive. It had Windows 3.11 installed, with a 25 MB memory and 45 MB HD, and though it wasn’t much of a workstation compared to nowadays inventions, but this machine marked the true beginning for me and Marwa in the world of computer games. And I don’t know if this would sound too childish, but the habit of playing games together lasted until secondary school. What do I mean by together? Well, I don’t mean we used a multi-player option but we used to have this agreement: An hour for me and an hour for her, with us sitting beside each other, sometimes in the same chair!

The excitement in having a computer game partner in the observation panel seated right next to you, giving you valuable comments and needed encouragement, is everything compared to playing it solo. On the weekends, we usually woke up early before mom and dad, sometimes at 8am. If one of us wakes up first, it’s their duty to wake the other up, and not two minutes would pass before you would find us pressing the large and blue power button on the PC (we used to have quarrels about that because it was very exciting), and then we tuck ourselves in a big chair, or in two small chairs, whichever was available in the living room. We eagerly wait for Windows to load (which was very fast compared to current complex operating systems), and we open a blue Games menu that dad prepared for us.

And then, we explore the games: Dave, Queen, Chess, Death Rally, Prince of Persia, etc. We quickly have a discussion about what game to play, taking into account our saves and which levels we reached in each of them, and then we start our session, 1 hour round robin, and when we get hungry, we head to the fridge and pick anything, sometimes we just survive on milk or pickles until breakfast. When mom and dad woke up, we kind of felt an end creep up on us, because it meant we had to leave the PC for a few hours.

Sometimes the PC was just unavailable, and some other times we were not really in the mood for computer games. Those mornings were innovation time where we had 3 hours to waste until breakfast, and we had to have fun; more than that, we had to improvise something silent to not wake the house up out of sheer noise. Our list had many things: house made out of cushions, antiques exhibit (this required the nastiest mess you can ever imagine, we used to get the house’s entire silverware out), a restaurant (you guessed it right, the fridge), sometimes we just sit and play like 10 rounds of Monopoly, Uno or play old card games.

To tell you about how we used to have fun together while all grown up, when we were at secondary school, there was a famous computer game named “The Curse of the Monkey Island,” we finished all its levels together, cheering each other along the way, and we managed to have a copy of a cheat sheet, which had very complicated English that we most successfully managed to translate and fully understand. I could recall words like “formaldehyde” and some weird vocabulary. There was never a night without a discussion about the game. Also the computer game Death Rally, we used to update each other with score reports and follow our progress, was very challenging.

In strategic games like Warcraft and The Age of Empires, we used to build custom scenarios to challenge each other, and when I get her to sit and play my own engineered map and resources, I sit beside her to watch her face when she discovers the traps and surprises I made especially for her.


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Marwa has a small round face, a remarkably cheerful bloom, she’s rather happy than sad, she has an extraordinary smile, and the most beautiful “Ibraheem, 3ashan khatry” ever ever ever. She has darker eyes than mine, and because her face is fairly small, and with an anemic girth all her life, they appear to be large in the middle of her face, adding to her natural beautiful complexion. She’s famous for having a nice nose-mouth structure, and with a white mostly pale skin, her overall looks are spotless. Even when somber, her face turns even into a different kind of beautiful. I remember very well the school ID she had, with a photo so staggering that when she used to show it to the guard, I remember the rest of the girls around us in secondary school making very anxious and amazed sounds, quickly forming a circle around her to have a glance at her photo. At the small, smiling and shining face of hers embroidered in a beige veil. She is short, playful in steps and very lovely in her body expressions generally.

Marwa’s wits and kind nature attract friends very quickly, very loving and loyal ones. If I managed to bond with two or three boys in class, she doubles that at the least, with firmer bonds. Mine last for months, her for long years. She tends to be very natural with people generally, she never was hypocritical, and though sometimes I worry that her kindness will harm her, she proves me wrong all the time, preserving her cunning nature from when she was young. The only problem I find with her is that she accepts too many people, she lets them in too fast; she’s careful yes, but that’s something I don’t do or like either for that matter at all.

Her affection was flowing unto friends, but it prospered inside the family itself. She’s the one who cares, and she’s the one responsible, we can’t possibly survive without her attention. She calls a family member each day, she checks on anybody sick, she pays many visits and she spares no effort in making everyone happy, and in our extended family, it’s quite the same, because though they’re sometimes far related, they’re family for her. She identifies very quickly with all ages, forming a solid center in all our lives generally.

When it comes to making sacrifices, and as far as she’s concerned, it’s vehemently forbidden to even discuss what’s good for her sake. For Marwa, a sacrifice is sometimes more serious than obligation itself, an obligation is not something she finds fulfilling for how much she needs to show love and care. I do that, but we differ in one tiny thing: I sometimes feel burdened after making sacrifices, I mentally mark my actions as sacrifices, while she simply doesn’t. That’s why she almost always forgets about them. And, though she disagrees with me on that one, I always reason her mood swings to the very fact, and I always tell her that she must care about herself at least as much as she cares about others, who most likely did not deserve it in the first place.

During our early days at school, I was the prodigal son, she preferred a down path that just didn’t get along with being attentive. She chose not to concentrate; let’s just say school wasn’t her thing. I recall very well the insufferable mornings she had during final exams along the years, sickness and nausea, weeping and laziness, homework hell and grades turmoil. Mom used to teach her how inadequate it is to be late, compared to me, a thing that she quite remarkably passed without the least bit of mortification.

In Riyadh, and when I was in my first preparatory year at school, me and Marwa were enrolled in Egyptian institutions, schools that teach Egyptian curriculum. The parents took that decision after being concerned about our levels in subjects like Maths and English language, inciting warnings from other Egyptian parents that we might be different when we grow up (which was very scary to a parent with two kids), and after knowing that the Egyptian embassy in Riyadh secured a very reliable exams system in Saudi schools; a place where we can take our exams proctored by Egyptian people as if we were in Egypt.


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I was too young to understand legalities, but those fancy institutions were shut down one morning by government officials, scattering the dreams of thousands of Egyptian families into dust. Marwa and I were home-schooled for the rest of our years in KSA. Yes, I was home schooled for 5 years, she was for 6 years. We used to have private lessons for some time, and then grouped lessons became a phenomenon in Riyadh (a thing that I believe is intact until now), and we joined them. Staying at home was an experience that had numerous perks, it was very comfortable to the extent that it spoiled us in some ways. Socially, I was already limited in resources, so I gave up the treat totally, giving my whole focus to studying, scoring higher grades by the year and umm... gaining A LOT of weight. I recall I was ranked the first on Riyadh the first year of secondary school. Marwa and I used to wait eagerly for the last exam day because it meant redemption and freedom for 4 whole months before the new school year. They were the happiest days.

When we finally settled in Egypt, we joined a secondary school (more of a mental institution in fact). It was in Dokki and was supposed to be a good place for kindergarten not for senior students. I, for a start, scored my 98% and the second rank in my class was 68%, so... go figure. Marwa and I went into a state of depression, it was our first year in Cairo, life was extremely noisy and tiring, the weather was dusty and just humid and full of black objects that we never identified with. We always felt that people were completely inept, interfering and prying, not to mention impolite and ditsy. God we were so gullible.

I was always with her, and between classes I go check on her and see if she was okay. We had this puritan look on both of our blooms, a thing that made us very famous by the end of the first week at school, we were treated differently and all teachers respected us the most. I could quite say that this year was the official kick off to my cynicism and narcissism, I turned into a full time rebel but in the silent way, I abhorred everyone and I used to judge on the whim, it hit me ruthlessly how false Egyptians were and how endlessly hypocritical they dealt with each other. I felt utterly protective of Marwa, I considered the situation too chaotic for her to survive it. Funnily enough, she did a way better job than I did. We felt nostalgic to Riyadh since day one, and until now we long for half a day in our villa in Riyadh.

There, we had a huge playground in that residence in a compound named ‘Rabwa’, a spacious home, and a calm and abundant life. The first thing we noticed in Cairo upon our homecoming, is that nothing here is really stable in the sense of the word. Think: treadmills. You are always tired, you have errands to run every day, you have to shower many times a day, and transportation? What the heck does that even mean? And why do people act like that in malls and supermarkets? Why do girls dress that revealing of cloth and why are guys total punks? And what’s with the bodybuilding? And why do veiled girls wear bright-green and tight tops under their supposedly reserved garments? Me and Marwa used to mock the prospect because it was very funny, not to mention totally pathetic and sad.

By the year 2004, I could describe the relationship between me and Marwa as ‘very strong.’ We were close, we told each other everything, and the bond was capping by the day because we were experiencing drastic life changes together, we moved from our home in KSA and we came here to find it very hard to adapt; the school was hilarious, I became very sensitive of her actions and demeanor, I always knew how she felt, about what and why, and sometimes I foretold how her actions were exactly going to be. This year had many incidents, in fact it was one of the most dramatic in our life. But no matter how many lines I could write to describe how potent me and my sister were in terms of our relationship, all things changed totally in one night. In one night, we turned from brother and sister to much more.


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It was the eve of January the 27th, and I’ll start by a door bell at 2am sharp, I reached for the handle, opened it hastily, and said: “Come in, Tant, Mama’s in her room,” and she replied: “How are you holding up, Ibraheem? I’m so sorry for Mom”. This was a dear friend of my Mom who happens to be a physician. Dad called them after my mother’s blood pressure collapsed to 40, to ask her if she could come and inject saline to help with her blood pressure. My mother had severe aggressive cancer in her stomach, spleen and intestines; she suffered through numerous medical operations and procedures with no good outcomes and by that night she was a stay-at-home terminal case. Dad was the only one monitoring her because doctors were at their wits ends concerning her condition, he used to follow her, stand by her bedside, hang those saline bags and supervise her nutrition until she stopped eating, drinking and pretty much talking at all.

The last time me and Marwa saw our mommy’s face was that moment, when Tant went to her room to take over, dad told us to go to bed, I had a huge quilt to sleep on the floor in the living room, for my grandparents were living with us that month, and my room was occupied. I tucked myself in my blanket there to try and get some sleep, dad was in the guest room praying, Marwa was supposed to be in her room. I think it was 2:30am when she came to me, she was holding the Quran, she poked me gently:

Marwa: Ibraheem.

Me: Yes, what’s wrong? (it was weird)

Marwa: Do you hear this?

Me: Hear what?

Marwa: Mama.

Me: No, why, something is up?

Marwa: get up, come.

And she dragged me to the hall that reaches to my mom’s room directly, we stood there completely still, watching the doorway only, we couldn’t see her nor Tant nor dad, who happened to go there while I was about to sleep, and I actually heard my Mom … she was going like: “Ah .. ah .. ah” moaning quietly. Her voice was too mellow to notice, and the words weren’t very frequent, you could hear one every minute, and Dad saying after each, to Mom: “What, honey, tell me what’s wrong?” in a tone so grieved it touched the very thin straw that was keeping me and my sister from falling apart, and we exchanged a look of anguish, a very pale one. We breathed a sigh of relief when Mom’s silent pains stopped and we both headed back to my quilt in the living room, we both sat there right next to each other, covered our feet with the blanket, she handed me the Quran and told me feebly: “Ibraheem, read Surat Yaseen.”

I started to recite the verses, we were both endowed with some peace, and Marwa was holding my right arm with her hands, she kept slowly budging closer until I could feel the warmth of her startled breaths. I paused for a while, but she urged me to go on, saying: “Kammel,” and I did until I finished the whole chapter. I closed the Mos7af, and put it away, while she was still sitting next to me. I lied down while telling her that she’s supposed to try and get some sleep, and when she was about to go away, Mom started to whine again in pain, but this time, her “Ah’s” were more frequent. Every 2 or 3 seconds, we heard our mommy’s voice.

Marwa panicked, she fled to the hall, I stood right where I was, just... listening, a thing I wasn’t able to do half an hour earlier from the living room, which meant Mom’s voice was quite loud this time …

Ibhog, November 27, 2010


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Mercy

It’s been a while since my last post. Many things happened. Many were the tests one went through. Do I rant about my drought of inspiration, again? Ha.

Three weeks ago Dad went to buy some stuff from a stationary shop near the university for my sisters and left the car with the keys inside, just a few feet away from the shop. It was only seconds before the car was stolen. That night I was hanging out with my friends until midnight in a restaurant that served Arabic food. I remember how the grilled meat was delicious.

It was around one in the morning when I returned home to find my step mom’s brother with his wife standing at the door without keys, incessantly knocking so that the house keeper would wake up and open for them. So I open the gate and we were going upstairs when he told me about the bad news.

I was stupid. I was overly stunned and I regret it now. Dad was still having dinner because he had spent most of the night at the police station. I asked him what happened, he said he left the keys in the car and it disappeared. I got very angry. I don’t know if it was at the fact the he left the keys, or at the fact that this country is turning into a serious mess. I retired to my room and left myself alone with my disturbed thoughts until we all slept.

I’m not sure how to describe that feeling. I’ve been subjected to robbery before; two cell phones. It’s a very dark color of helplessness mixed with absolute fury. There came times when I got so tense that my muscles ached. And then came fear: what if that thief tried to contact us, or even come to the neighborhood. Our door lock had to be changed immediately, and my sisters were warned not to open doors to any strangers whatsoever. I worried about them going out and so... it was just tough.

Dad suffered the hardship. We’re not financially prepared for such a crisis, and I had to offer help. The problem was, that night I made a mistake. I should have consoled him instead of surrendering to my frustration. He was sad I wasn’t there at first. The next night, he told me that my angry face was harder on him than the theft itself. That statement coming from him broke my heart and face. It broke them in ways that made him take them back in a sort because he felt sorry for me. And I’m the one who should have felt sorry for him.

Dad suffered a lot. Those days gave me much time to ponder on this fact. My father spent years of his life on us, and on me specifically. I can’t even begin to state how depressing that is. Not money, but years and years full of breaths and heartbeats, of nerves and of health, for our sake. Dad has this trait: he never spends money for his own sake; he’s very modest about that, he always reproves himself the minute he feels he enjoyed anything without his family – he’s addicted to us that way. I told myself that God would never let him down.

I remember dad crying when he knew about my secondary school grades. I remember him weeping before, prostrating to God in gratitude. I also remember how proud he was of me whenever we meet a friend or an acquaintance. I also remember this specific friend who told my father something I will never ever forget:

�B=8 �5<.. و�? وإذا.. !@? < ا�=�!�

We patrolled Cairo’s streets searching for our car. They were desperate nights. The obsession reached alarming levels, because whenever you’re outdoors you can’t find peace, and you’re dizzy


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from the constant looking around for a car. And that awful feeling that dawns on you when you’re not sure if the car you just saw is the one or not, especially when you were taking a speeding bus or a taxi in the first place. And the horrid stories we heard in police stations and from friends about car thefts in Cairo, and the shocking crimes committed under that name.

During that time all I did was try to be there for dad. At times, all I strove for was a laugh out of his sad self. I keep browsing car ads and telling him that we can buy this car or that car, and that he shouldn’t worry, that I’m there for him. The breakfasts. The prayers. The desperation. The phone calls. The broken sighs. The pensive corners. Dad hugged me many times. It was enough for me.

I turn to God, the most merciful. I know there’s wisdom in all of this. And there was this warm realization that everything will be okay, that this car will either be back, or that we’ll have a new awesome one. Dad has always wanted to get himself a new car, and I told him that maybe this is it; maybe this just had to happen so that his wish would come true.

We lost hope in a sort. We stopped looking for the car and we were planning for the new one. Sad, but hopeful at the same time. Last Friday, my sister’s husband decided to give it one more shot. He took his bicycle and patrolled the streets. I thought that he really didn’t have to do that. My sister says that he prayed in the morning to God for the car. He told her that it’s just too important, and that he must find it.

I was on my way back from the mosque with Dad after Al-Asr, when we met a neighbor. Dad did some catching up with the man and then he asked him about the young girl he saw walking by his side the other day. Her story is such a miserable one: she’s the daughter of a very sick man who isn’t able to work, and she was looking for financial aid because the rent was no longer bearable. Dad asked the man about the rent. The man told him. Dad took out his wallet and paid it on spot. I blamed Dad a bit for that move. I mean, we’re going through a rough patch ourselves, a little financial caution is needed. He just can’t be as generous as he used to be, can he?

So he told her that it’s just too important, and that he must find it, my sister’s husband.

And he did, that very day.

He found it in the weirdest place ever, in front of the Dokki police station. They must have found it and were about to call Dad! We quickly rode to the station and found it parked among many soldiers. It was Al-Maghrib, we prayed and Dad went inside the station to finalize the papers.

To our surprise, the police knew nothing of the car outside. According to them, it was never on their record of returned vehicles. Until now, we don’t know how it got there. Whether the thief himself had enough guts to park it right in front of the police station, or whether with some peculiar form of destiny it was stolen from THAT thief or what, we don’t know. What we know is that it was returned to a very safe place and stranded for over a week (from its dusty appearance). Also, strangely enough, nothing was really stolen from the car. Spare tire, cassette player, everything was in place. The car was out on fuel and its battery was dead, however. From the stories we hear, no one had their car returned this way. Ever.

I love my dad, and I know now that he’s not an ordinary man. Dad is used to giving. Giving, for him, is an act that pursues itself regardless of its sources. For dad, the only source is God, and for him, that source is infinite. And he was right. Dad gave nonetheless.

I remembered how the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, used to give like a man who didn’t fear need. I learned that reading those lines, reading about Islam without practicing it, doesn’t mean a thing. I was so happy I had the chance to witness that lesson practiced, and I was happier it was from my own father.


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I wish to be like him one day. To give nonetheless. To give when I can and especially when I can’t.

I pray this prayer a lot these days:

-��م ا�$�; وأد��9�.. ��& وا��ي أرض ا��

Ibhog, January 13, 2012


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Dear You

There are two who can forgive you an immeasurable number of times: God and mothers. God forgives as long as we ask for forgiveness, and even if we don’t at times, according to his infinite wisdom. And mothers, they scorn and hug at the same time. They caress cheeks and reprimand all at once. And if you look, who would a child run crying to after the world sees his heinous mistakes? It’s his Mom’s chest, or his God’s door. Tears are imprinted in her collarbones, or on His doorstep.

I would like to apologize to you in order to clear a fear that inhabits only my own mind. I’m obsessed and you know it. I get angry at you, because anger masters me when I undermine its significance, and I regret how much I keep spending of the credit that’s your ample care. But I just can’t be.

If by any means, from under a red wing of my fury fled a word that I failed to bar and that pricked your peace, forgive me. I could sense the most infinitesimal of turbulence in the way your face relaxes after a smile, or in the gait of your steps one too fast, or in your shut doors one bit too loud. I drink it all and then some, and it haunts me at night. How could I have done this to you? How stupid and ignorant of me.

My friend, you’re different in the way I breathe when you’re around. You’re special because of how senseless the air is when you simply leave! Fact: my need for you has become a climax. I seek your complacency. I always want to be sure that you’re not bothered by me, not even in the smallest of situations.

Altercations with you are always cherished love nominees. An attempt at distance ends with me closer to that heart of yours. A loud complaint in your face, ends up pawning my peace into the safe of you. And the paradox, of hate and love. Oh, the paradox of hate and love, my friend!

In the end, let me profusely state that I shall very difficultly learn how to live without you, when it’ll be too long since you left. I know it’s happening soon.

And I’m sorry forever.



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Parents

There’s nothing harder in this world, and I repeat, nothing, than the way a parent’s eye changes when they look at you. No matter how you try to deny it, no matter how you try to cloud it with loud laughs or other earthly indulgences, it shall shadow you; it shall take refuge in the back of your eyelids and in the echo of your laughs. It shall lodge itself in your lungs and it shall bully your heart.

And it shall haunt you at night.

Go to them, you weary soul, go kiss the hand and the forehead. This universe takes their side, even when they’re wrong. Don’t try and fathom it. Don’t dwell in its vague reasons. Just go and redeem yourself by their feet.

I talk out of experience and not of passion to prose; lurks in a dark corner of this blog’s archive a dark experience that splintered the first half of 2010: the worst rift between me and my father. I shall never forget it. The scar is so deep it went completely through my chest and I’m still trying to fill that torn void with good deeds, with tears, with sacrifices, and with prayers.

May God protect our parents. May He help us be the best we can with them.

And may He grant us all Heaven. Amen.



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On having a mother

The reason our respect for parents is kind of decreed is that we’d be simply lost without them. If it happens that a parent gives you an advice or an order that you refuse to follow, under your allege of being harassed, then by the rules of this universe you will be lost. Moms just get their children inside out that way. And the relationship is based on giving only, which is yet another reason why listening to them is the least you could do to them.

There have been many phases in my life when I needed my Mom the most, that sometimes I forget when exactly I have not needed her. I lost the count of the questions that I need to ask her. The question mark that’s my life sometimes gets too big for me to carry alone, and I just wish I knew at least what she’d have to say. This is besides the comfort my mere asking for answers brings. I trust there’s wisdom in how my life is following through. Maybe at the end I’d be rewarded with some kind of reward, or maybe I won’t deserve it after all. What I know is, having a Mom in this world is one of the biggest blessings bestowed upon mankind.

I sometimes get consumed by curiosity though. If she were to live until now, would I be a different person? Would I be better? Worse? What would have happened to my maturity? To my sense of being? Will I be more comfortable indeed? Or will it happen that I lose sense of the blessing that’s having a Mom, the one I’m so inundated with now?

Oh wow, I feel better having written the above. This is good news; I miss how better writing makes me feel.

I’ve been dreaming about my Mom lately. Most of the scenes there are shadowed sad moments, when she’s just too sick in bed unable to respond to anyone and not knowing anyone in the first place - kind of reminiscent of her very last days.

But beneath the crusted shell, beneath the haggard cloak, lies light. For every void that has been manifested by loss of her, is filled with need for Him. Sometimes we actually forget that without God we’d perish, sometimes we really think we’re taking good care of ourselves, but not me, not lately. I’m becoming extremely dependent on Him. I have been ignited out of my comfort zone and was cast full in the unknown, just to taste a sip of being absolutely submitted to Him. Him letting me down is not even an option. It’d feel like the sun is rising from the West – it’s the apocalypse.

I remember one day right before graduation. I was walking with a friend of mine when he asked me what I’d do if our interviews went wrong and we were left without our dream jobs. I deliberated for a second before telling him: “This is not an option. Allah must choose the best for me. I just know it”.

People forget that the way to God is paved with need for Him, and that need for Him is a result of not living the best of lives. When you truly depend on Him, then this, my friend, is the best of lives.

If your Mom is well and is around, go kiss her hand. Do it now. I’m not kidding. If you’ve never done it before and if you think it’d be awkward, well then talk to her about it and tell her you want to do it. The first time I kissed both of my parents’ hands was ten years ago; they were a bit surprised, but the smile on their faces I will never ever in the life of me forget. It became a habit with dad now, but I can’t do it with Mom anymore.


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So I’m serious. Go and kiss her hand. Don’t wait for Mothers’ Day, because every day is Mothers’ Day my friend, and I hope you’d never lose your Mom to discover this astounding fact yourself.

Now Go!



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Real Fiction

You know how sometimes people can resemble cartoon characters? The tone, the lisp sometimes, the funny stature when they express their worries, or their happiness? The way they suddenly run, jump, scream or laughingly weep? Those people, you can’t fix a stern face with them; your anger always fails miserably at delivering its message when they’re the subject. They just stretch your face into a smile that you are unable to hold back.

My sister is one of those people. Yesterday in her pink, cushiony dress, she was in my hug. She muttered some words in childish monotone that I couldn’t fathom, but that was all her. She was happily engaged to a good man, yesterday, she was. Alhamdulilah.

I’m taming my untrained words now in an attempt to describe my weird feelings. A burden has been cast off me and dad’s chests, in a sort. With that seeps in me the realization that it was all so natural, so planned of a life for her to meet her match now. I like watching this universe directed by its creator, delivering to those who wait that which they deserve. It’s so beautiful how patience always pays you back one day what it kept taking away from you.

Why are we always in a hurry? What’s so amazing about the end that we’re all so keen on running for? Didn’t we experience ends before? How many times have we found out the mundaneness of a moment that was once so sought?

“All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn’t what you thought.” – Mitch

I really think it’s all about our expectations. It’s the darnest thing if you ask me, that expectations stuff. You wait, anticipate and build up all those false images and then, when it all finally happens, it passes by so normally. So firework-less, no excitement, no long pauses like the ones that once filled all of our daydreams. Just, life.

Although depressing at first sight, the fact is, it’s very comforting. Fireworks are good when you watch them a night or two a year, not when they’re always there! I mean, it would be so noisy and annoying.

We’re tricked into thinking that beautiful pauses in life should stretch. It’s not their purpose to do that. Instead, they only exist to make us happy every once in a while. We shouldn’t expect more than that of them. They’re like kisses: they are one-second happenings and lifetime memories.

On the other hand, what should indeed last forever, what truly should have steadiness and everlasting flare, are people: absolutely ordinary, imperfect people. Ones who you’ll fight with every now and then, but ones whom the idea of going home with doesn’t irk, doesn’t agitate, doesn’t make you second guess your judgments. People whom you live with. Family.

True life is when one of these lovely moments happens with these people who are always around. It’s rare, but there’s nothing more beautiful in the world than this. For your Mom, who you see every day, to give you a hug that you remember for decades. For your dad, who wakes you up every morning, to one time kiss your forehead into eternal remembrance. For your sister to laugh an echo in your heart. For your brother to come and caress your hair into numbing warmth. For your love, to sleep in your arms one night, unplanned, unintended, except by destiny.


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To find things you didn’t even know you were searching for. To realize things that just make you happy. To live life in deja vu, with all of its incomplete excitement.

Imperfection is more perfect with the right ones, indeed.

I love Ghada. Way too much.



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The Box

I put my laptop to rest, lumber to the kitchen, grab myself a cup of water before going to bed and catch Safaa doing her computer and web stuff after midnight. I banter with her, send her tucked hair into total flare just before I see that tiny white box peering at me, from inside the desk drawer.

Glossy and beauty-product-like, I open it to find a neatly folded paper that has some poem written about Mom, I couldn’t discern the handwriting but was assured later it was Marwa’s. I was assured later it was someone from this family because at our home pain is in the air, it lurks in corners and under pillows. It takes refuge in the period of silence that follows laughs, and it’s pasted to the back of our eyelids. And it enjoys proving its intimacy with denial.

One can only pretend to be so happy. I know.

So after reading the words colored uncolored, I decide to blog – because in this life, utterly controlling, and immensely ironic, your tendency to perish away increases when you make less decisions. So you do things, to fool yourself into importance and accomplishment. Into living.

Everything’s going to be okay – you hear this right when everything is going right to hell.

I deliberate. I converse with the tearful eye she drew after the first couplet, on the paper spread across from me. I wonder how does it feel to draw tears. I soften. I remember that she’s sick these days. My urge to go and kiss her forehead’s clouded by a stupid quarrel we had.

I leave this post. Go to her room, get blinded by the darkness, warned by Ghada to not nudge her comfort, get distracted by the purring cat warming its furry body to the hems of my sweatpants. But I look there in the darkness, into her tiny sleeping figure, I inhale my sadness, exhale my apologies and leave her to her peaceful beauty.

I get back to my room, the hazy haven, plunged with the muffled drone of the laptop’s fan. I pay her lines one last visit, look right into the painted eye and see the story of our family. I delicately fold the paper and put it back in its cave. Touch the box one last time to imbibe the goodbye vibes. Put it back where it belongs.

Because you don’t let go of pain. You make room for it.

And I wonder to myself: how can something so big fit into a box so small?



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Family

I guess I won’t finish my novel this weekend.

Funny, how Change of Heart is such a theme in my life these days. Sometimes, I kind of feel that some books are too real for me. I keep seeking fantasy and romantic fiction to keep me away from reality.

I treasure the moments where I simply sit and do nothing. I’m such a big fan of waiting now, at the reception of some office, at the doctor, or when I wait for my driver every morning. Those times are about the only ones where I can find peace and silence. I put a favorite song on repeat, put on my earphones and forget about everything else, about what will have to be done next. There simply is no next.

“We couldn’t erase our mistakes, so we did the next best thing and did something that distracted attention from them.” – Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

I checked my online thingies and then put on a woolly sweater to fight away the cold noon and headed to grandpa’s. Headed to a fairytale, so to speak.

They were eight kids. Okay, maybe I’m fan of something else other than waiting. I’m a fan of children. I’ve been told I’d be a good father, I feel I will. I’m just not sure whether I’ll be a father. Because it takes two. Halves... who... fit together.

Suddenly I found me to be a 10 year old, instead of 22.

They got themselves an Uno deck to find me telling them: get another one because we’re like so many, you guys! We played and played. Because I always forget the rules of Uno, those little angels actually taught me how to play!

When it was time to leave, me and Marwa took the kids and headed for the elevator: our laughter rocking from the fifth floor down way because I kept acting scared from the up sliding doors. Then we were on the street, a couple of blocks to walk them to our building (to escort the kids to my Uncle a flight up from our apartment). I had two little cousins holding my hands, and Marwa had the other two.

And then,

I return home.

To reality again. To my mess of a fade lit room, and life. Unfinished novel. Pencils and papers strewn on a dusty desk. A laptop that suffers oppression. A bed that looks like it just survived a war. A tornado of clothing and socks and shoes. Shelves that have tongues stuck out. Feelings hung in the air. I close the room’s door on my wake. Stand idly, hope for something I don’t know. Inject yet another dose of waiting into my yearning system.

And just as if I summoned her, I feel the pat on my shoulder, the whisper in my ear, her hands were cold with concern: “Ibraheem... What’s wrong?”

I close my eyes to trap the tears. Why does love render you so ambivalent at times? Towards your own self? Why is it so hard to feel weak? My chest heaves with pain. I stifle my cries and purse my lips.


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“I know,” she says softly, the rhyme of a mermaid, “I know.”

She kisses my right cheek and hugs my back. I’m afraid to turn around, I’m sulked too deep in my pause, in the middle of my room. In the middle of my life.

Or, rather, in the bottom of it. Unable to move an inch. Unable to want to move an inch.

Her chin sleeps on my shoulder. I could hear her breaths and smell the flowers in her hair. She’s too weightless, a feather. I rest my head on hers, too. It’s we’re like one. It felt we’re like one.

“I don’t deserve you,” I say in a stutter.

Her body taped to mine, didn’t move or stiffen, she just exhaled a breeze that reminded me of Spring, and told me: “I don’t deserve you too.”

Her hand flies slowly from the behind of me, rises gently to my face and wipes the tear that escaped me, away.

And lingers there, cupping my left cheek, playing with my lips some, my eyebrows some, and my entire existence some.



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The things I miss...

I miss how me and dad used to sit for lunch before others and start with salad. I miss how I used to kiss his hands the moment he gets back from work. I miss the spontaneous hugs he gave me, and I gave him, in our hallway. I miss how I talked with him about work, and how he talked with me about work. I miss how I complained about my job to him, or bragged about a task I accomplished, or how I watched the way his pride danced over his shoulders when I told him about the praise I received, or the raise I earned, or the success I reached.

I miss our discussions about life, marriage and family. I miss how he used to talk about Mom, and the old days. I miss our reminiscing and recollections. I miss the way he’d call me over to sit with him. I miss how we’d enjoy watching movies together. And I miss the look I give him during a movie, in a scene I especially like, to see his face, just to make sure he liked it like I expected. I miss how we exchange remarks on photography and direction. I miss how we sometimes forget the actors, and I miss how we strive to remember their other movies.

I miss how we all would have lunch outdoors, and how when the waiter comes with that tasseled book with the bill, I pay just to make him happy. I miss it when I tell him: “Dad, you’ll like this soup. Dad, this dish is good.” I miss it when we both laugh at how my sisters are dumbfounded when the menu is in English, and we both enjoy telling them their translation. I miss how he corrects me at times, and how I ask him at others. I miss how he’d tell me about his readings, and how I’d tell him about that novel I just finished.

I miss how he’d be late at work for hours, and I’d wait for him in spite of the fact that I’m starving, just to eat with him. I miss it when he’d call me when I’m late to ask where I am, and to tell me to try and be early. I miss how angry he’d get when I hang out with friends for days in a row. I miss how he’d pass by my room to say Hi, and how he’d urge me to go pray with him in mosque.

I miss... everything about my dad.

Everything.

And I can’t even word it out properly.

‘Properly’ is a tall order in my life now...

...sadly enough.

Ibhog, May 30, 2010


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A Dream of Mom

You know what’s there in movies that’s never in real life? The part where you’re not acting, where candid imperfection surpasses the best of acting. We get to live some moments that we can’t even repeat when we want to and this is how memories are born. You can’t replay them and even if life was generous enough and you were given something close to a relived memory, it’s still very unintended, and just so improvised.

You watch videos of your family sometimes and fail to compare them to movies. There’s no production, no editing, no cutting and finessing, there’s no processing whatsoever, rather, a sheer scenario of love, in its most imperfect glorious form. Your sister’s hair wasn’t how she wanted it to be, your voice felt weird, your make up looked awful, you said something awkward and everybody laughed. They kissed and it was shorter than they thought it would. They danced and someone fell off.

But they’re TOGETHER. These people truly love each other, they have a real home that’s been built and has been standing there solid and alive perhaps for decades. Meanwhile in movies you get to somehow believe that a two hour drive could account for anything close to real love. Not only that, but you also get to judge your life, and others lives sometimes, according to it. The world waits for a while before we’re slapped one day with the big news: the producer is one of the most 100 influential people in the world. For what exactly? What did they influence? They influenced you to compare your life to some lines that a professional wrote down and that someone acted (repeat: acted), and be miserable, or worse, be actually happy and find out later on that you were in fact miserable, that this was never your life, and these were never your values, and that this wasn’t how things were supposed to go, and that you regret it, and that you now lost the line, and that you’re just cast there in the middle of nothing, with traces of addiction and scraps of euphoria that you never feel again with a sigh deep enough.

But this wasn’t even what I wanted to talk about here. Back to candidness.

A friend of mine today, whom I consider an older sister, saw my Mom in a dream. She’s never seen a single picture of her. My Mom was talking to her, when her voice started dwindling into monotone, at which time my friend couldn’t hear but whispers, so she got closer to her.

Mom then asks my friend if she wants to be okay, if she wants to just feel comfort. My friend acknowledges and so my Mom in the dream takes her head into her lap and starts caressing her hair, still whispering. My friend says her face was light and that it was all so peculiar. She woke up so emotional.

I felt jealous. On the phone today she was telling me about it and I burst out laughing and telling her that I want that kind of dream! I kept asking her if she was thinking about my Mom; she wasn’t.

After Mom passed away, my sister Marwa used to have most of the dreams in the family about her, and we all used to be so jealous. We wanted to see Mom so much that we would then stay in our heads trying to figure out what we were doing wrong. Why isn’t she visiting us? My grandfather thinks it’s a special gift, and that my sister should thank God for it.


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I had many dreams of my Mom in the years that followed, but it’s been quite scarce lately. I think about her a lot, and write about her a lot, but no dreams. This time, the gift was given to a dear friend.

Lucky her!

Alhamdulilah



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Whispered Verses

Your thought is conceived before my observation; the way your arms sag upon you means your chest contracted with pain, and so your heart in reverse oozes the emotion up your throat that is now forming a lump to swallow. Your face then draws the stature of that feeling of yours, and in every wrinkle a thousand words are carved in the sheets of time; the way your mouth twitches with say, the bleary blinks of your eyes, and the lopsided smile a dam to a stifled scream, so silent you lost track of other sounds.

And then in my eyes you see a mirror far too real for your comfort, you couldn’t really believe I read all that in a matter of seconds. And in you a war brews between surrender and reserve; surrender blows regret in reserve’s face it wails in pain, and then reserve thwarts surrender with guilt it stones it into absolute vanity. And so the two go on sparring, until they consume you, and themselves. In which moment I hold you with my eyes, get closer, and whisper the verses in your ears.

My Mom used to do that to me when I was young. When my confusion made me insomniac, and when my bed seemed to boil unstable, Mom would come and engulf me with her whispers. They were the most comforting moments of my life. She would come, get under the covers with me, start reciting the verses in cotton voice, and with touches of velvet she would keep rubbing my chest, her hand would move over my heart, healing it, right... left... soil of soul cleansed... right... left... dust of heart blown away...

Right. Left. She whispers the words of our Creator.

Right. Left. The warmth.

Until I sleep.

Ibhog, July 3, 2012


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Grateful

Even though one’s life is full of annoyances, they still have to seek things to be grateful for. Nothing is perfect, and if it were, it’ll be to boringly constant, you know. I keep thinking about heaven, and whether this eternity should somehow bore humans; but how deeply wrong this is; happiness there takes forms that are far from constant.

You know how sometimes your attempts fail more than they don’t? When you feel that you’ve missed so much; and that your worth is such an insignificance compared to those who you admire? And then, after a while, God shows you that what you once thought a disappointment in yourself is in fact a rescue from empty vanity; that life has to it in you what’s not showed on others.

So yeah, I’m sad but I’m grateful and waiting. I’m grateful for my family and how religious they are. I’m grateful that someone in the house knows that I should wake up for Fajr, and actually cares enough to knock on my door. I’m grateful I share breakfast with my father, even though it’s mostly on the weekends. I’m grateful he calls every once in a while, when I’m at work, or when I’m out, just so he’s sure I’m okay, and that he misses me. I’m even grateful for our rough patches, because I learned that they make our bond much stronger.

I’m grateful for my sisters and the home of them. I love how they live in their own cocoons, and how pure they are. I also love how much they love me for me. I love it when my sister tells me about a book, or criticizes me when I’m lazy to go to prayers, or even when she yells at me. It doesn’t disturb me and it never nudges my peace; it just passes away. Sometimes I’m sad when I realize that even though we’re one family, I’m very different than them, but I often thank God for it because I never know how would living with someone like me be.

I’m grateful for the times I go to the mosque and find myself in the first line in prayers along with dad, my uncles and grandfather. It makes me proud yet it holds me responsible. I like it when I find the book I exactly need in our huge library, and I love it when I see my Mom’s handwritten comments on the margins. And oh, I’m so grateful for my Mom!

I’m so lucky she was my Mom, really. I think if I ever wrote a book, she would be in it inshaAllah. I’m grateful for the memories of her I see in old photos and kept possessions with such surviving scents. I like how serene her face was, and how beautiful her smile was carrying the baby me back in old. I’m grateful for the fact that traces of her are alive in me.

I’m grateful that I return back to such home from the confusing cruelty that’s this life. Even though we fight, even though there’s trouble at times; but somehow I got used to it; it became part of who I am. It seeped into my idea of co-existence; and I’m just grateful it’s only this and that kind of trouble; and not the kind that breaks other homes completely.

I love my family completely.

Alhamdulilah.



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“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.”

-Jodi Picoult,

My Sister’s Keeper


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Breather: Writing Tips

I belong to an awesome group of people called Zumaran - check our blog here: (http://zumaraan.wordpress.com/). One day we exchanged ideas in a thread about writing experiences. Many people ask me about my writing and language, and I’d like to share what might amount to tips here:

I started writing before reading back in 2006. It was seriously bad, it felt like I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but never really managed to word it out correctly. I was disappointed at most of what I wrote (still until now I do, actually), and then one day I decided to read. It was late, compared to many, and it was Jane Austen's Emma, after which my writing significantly improved, and through which my love for the genius that's Jane capped.

I stopped writing for a while and returned in 2009, better and more mature. My reading reached its peak in 2010, and my writing style took a turning point and started to build itself. I'm afraid it lingered too much in that turn and took a form that's not exactly pliable. At times, I feel it's inflicted upon me, rather than me controlling it. I wrote prolifically and it was all through my online blog and my meeting of great writers in the blogosphere.

I'm used to taking note of new words as I read, especially the ones that interest me. For example, just yesterday I learned about the word clique which means a group of friends or associates, and which in fact could be a good description of Zumaraan. I drop many words though on the days I choose to spend without writing; the well versed you are in areas of prose is as much a challenge as the conquest of nurturing and keeping them. When you rest too much from your workout sessions, you usually find it hard to get back your groove quickly, and muscle aches will accompany you for a while - it's the same in writing. It's like a sport.

I also extensively use the website Answers.com (with its browser plug-ins), and my iPhone dictionary is indispensable. I heed feedback, especially when it's coming from good writers. I usually go back to my noted vocabulary and eye the words before deciding to kick start a post that I want put right. I take rest when I can (I try to honestly), and I try to enjoy every step of the way.

My last, and well, most important lesson learned is the fact that having something to write about surpasses in importance having the means to well put it in words. Many published and award winning debuts were exactly that: they were stories that wanted to be told no matter what. My best pieces were the ones that wrote themselves through my words, not the ones that I wrote with my desire to write. A sign of words that want to get written is how fast they do, and a sign of want to write is at times a full cast in wordlessness.

Have fun, quote yourself and invent words. Language is a feisty companion, it'll need work and it'll take some time, but it's going to introduce you to sorts of pain killing you will never be able to give up, even though at times you'd want to. It's like healthy addiction. And yes, I invent words and I love it. Editors are going to give me hell one day but I don't care. My latest inventions are: fireworkless and floormatted and earlier ones were wordcraft and wordlorn. Don't listen to too much critique when you're still in the buildup. I suggest you read Tolkien's talk about editors in his Intro to The Lord of the Rings - the guy was a linguistics wizard and he practically invented the whole of the Elvin tongue and he hated editors for what they did to mouth his literary insanity.


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Language is voices and voices come from the soul and each ring you make is a translation of what you feel, just ponder the development of phonetics and vocals and you'll realize that this is a fact; that at times, you'll be able to understand, better: use English words, without even knowing what they really mean. You'll be ecstatic, then.

I will not hide this, but even writing this message made me feel better. It was long, and I apologize if it was inconvenient to you, and I hope you'd even go beyond the great writer you aspire to be inshaAllah. With a good Neyya, I believe we all can do great things.

Have a great night!

Yours,

Ibraheem


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Belief by Proof

In a very interesting conversation before with my fellow Zumaranians, we have talked about belief. Since that night and I’ve been wondering about this confounding state of existence; when you simply and unconditionally believe in something, someone or most importantly, when you irrevocably believe in God.

How do we reach such conviction with the usual strife of evidence?

I won’t be long. I’m just going to provoke your thoughts with this:

This universe is massive. It’s titanic. The amount of knowledge needed to mentally govern its farthings is beyond the reach of any of our minds. Yet, we know what knowledge is, and we seek it. On our little earth and with what equipment we have developed to desperately see beyond it, we made progress that we call ‘science’, and the more progress we make the more ‘science’ changes and evolves, and the more it diversifies.

The intriguing thought is: our notion of progress is kind of related to having ‘more’ knowledge, while what happens in reality is that the more we learn about this kingdom, the ‘less’ we know! Each step into this astounding realm leaves us way behind. We thought the moon was it, and then we thought planets were it, and then we were led into scary confines, much bigger, way farther, and infinitely more mysterious.

With a simple mathematical calculation: the more knowledge we seek, the less we turn out to know, so absolute knowledge would then yield to absolute loss. We then would reach this conviction: that at any point in time, what we really know, is nothing.

When you look at this massive kingdom, at yourself (yes yourself, you are a kingdom on your own) and how you work while you know nothing, you begin to wonder how come everything is working just fine then. Not just fine, but perfectly so. You know nothing, but everything is still perfect. You know nothing, but you are.

This means that someone somewhere must simply know everything.

Everything.

This is God.

And there’s your belief.



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Dignity

In the antiquity, a member of the royal family was having an elaborate dinner party with his extravagant entourage and highly appreciated guests of honor. Among the guests, there was an old acquaintance to the royal family; a man who was not as rich, but as valued.

After the dinner was over, the prince escorted his guests to an aisle in the palace that has abundant scenery of rare collections of jewelry and historical artifacts; among which was a fine stand holding a green, invaluable ruby. The guests were all awed at its divine beauty and shortly continued their tour with the prince along the hallway.

After the party resided back to one of the large chambers in the palace, one attentive servant sent a cue to the prince telling him that his invaluable gem has been missing since his party left the aisle. The prince, confused but respectful, chose to declare the news honestly to his guests, and articulated his concern about his exquisite belonging.

The party, all being of fine grain, suggested that they all should be searched for the jewel. In friendly consent to the suggestion by guests, servants started to search each of them until they reached the not so rich man, and when they were about to search his holdings, he said in a stern tone: “I will never be searched!”.

The prince ordered his servants to stop immediately, and out of respect to his friend, asked them to leave him be. Most of the party members naturally assumed that this poor man is the one responsible for the missing gem, but in obedience to their prince, they didn’t dare to cast the blame.

The party was over and days had passed when one of the servants during their daily chores fining the aisle stumbled upon the missing ruby in one dark mostly unattended corner. Anxious, he fled to his prince breaking to him the news, agitated about the guests handling the gem carelessly, but mainly, eager to know about the poor man.

The prince was very curious too, so he sent in haste to his friend asking him to join him this night for a small royal dinner. Feeling offended, the poor man said: “I will not be cast in the palace halls to be accused of theft again, I know not where the ruby is”. The prince urged his correspondent to beg the poor man to accept his invitation, and he finally did.

After dinner, the prince asked his friend: “If you didn’t steal the gem, why did you refuse to be searched?”, so the poor man says in honesty: “I have starving kids at home, and I noticed during the party night, that there was plenty of food left over, so I took some of it and hid it in my cloak, to feed my family. I was never going to allow your servants to embarrass me”.

The prince heard the man, looked up to his servant and ordered a generous endowment of gifts and giveaways, to honor his honesty and dignity.

In my dire attempts to cure what appears to be a malignant blogger’s block, I wrote down the story Dad had heard from his mother while he was a kid, 40 years ago or something. Day time adjustment is still giving me a headache – it feels like opening a fridge with a left door handle, while in reality, it only has a right one – you’re confused and dizzy at the same time.

By the bye, Indonesia is fasting two days ahead – funny and sad.

Go eat Atayef,


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87

Reflections and Confessions

I can’t write anymore. I... lost something. Sentences stopped coming to me the way they used to. My muse: passed away.

It’s making me sad, but not very sad. After all, a loss so small doesn’t really count when it comes to other significant injuries along the way.

Yesterday night I hung out with my best friend and I kept talking about how typical I’m striving to be these days. Yes, typical is all I seek. I’m done trying to break free of a circle that’s already blurry, I’m done hating average.

I want average now. I want routine and the comfort it envelopes. I want to not be disappointed by what the unexpected thrusts upon me every now and then. I want to be able to predict what will happen tomorrow instead of just waiting painfully for it.

I hate life dreams now. I hate how they crush more than they nurture. I hate how they add to my agony more than they do to my spirits. And I despise people and their judgments; their unending, unproven and short philosophies. Even more, I detest their definitive, yet insubstantial, stances towards their sad theories.

I was in the car with a very dear friend some days ago when they urged me to talk; a thing I really wanted (not to mention, needed) to do. I failed miserably at venting out what’s happened to me. It’s like a maze, so intricate you lost the memory of entry and the sight of the goal; so you’re stuck there for life.

Humph.

I’m starting from scratch. At work, I’m planning to transfer to a different domain, so different it feels like graduation all over again. I admit it’s refreshing, but in a desperate sense of the word. It’s also very disappointing and reminiscent of tiresome beginnings.

I have been wronged this year by many people in many situations. I can’t stop my mind from latching onto the thought of me deserving way more than what I’m getting. I have given much and was always rendered not enough; I have spent of my very scarce commodities and ended up in an ocean of debts, mainly to my own sanity.

How can someone find peace when the one thing they give ends up in the ten things they owe?

How do they find comfort when the moment that light breaks in the room of their chests it makes them see the very opposite of what they wished they saw?

“But then, how could you have any self-respect knowing that you didn’t believe in anything exactly? How did you embrace what was yours if you didn’t leave something for it? How did you create a life of meaning and pride?” - Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

If there’s anything I wish to say about this year, it’ll be very similar to what this boy would think; the boy who didn’t listen to the warnings his mother had given him before he fled to the street late at night to play with the rest of the cretins.


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They started a fire from scattered wooden remains. They knew how to but he didn’t. He thought he did and so he blindly followed his sorrowful conviction. He even heroically decided to make an example, to break more rules, to go the forbidden extra mile and to polish himself before his awed friends, when he so courageously jumped right into the damn fire.

They all fled the scene. They were right to do so. He was burnt there for some minutes before he could realize the pain, late enough for his injuries to be at their absolute worst.

He stumbled back home, treading on his own blood, tears streaking his existence and regret tearing it apart into fleeting shadows. His mother hugged him, even as she scorned him. But he lost his senses, he lingered there in her breast trying to feel the warmth, trying so hard to find comfort, but he was in too much pain to feel any. And even as he healed, the memory never stopped haunting him; the image of that fire and how confident he was striding towards his own doom, never really left him to enjoy hearing the echoes of his laughs. If they even echoed at all...

I apologize.

Do not underestimate the power of saying sorry. I’ve always had a habit of providing unsolicited apologies, sometimes to complete strangers. Many told me before that I don’t have to and that I’d be disparaging my worth and inflating theirs.

I disagree. I would like to believe that a sorry unneeded is safer than a grudge unheeded. It’s always a good thing and it always heals, regardless of whom it heals or what it heals.

So I’m saying I’m sorry, I really am deeply and universally sorry. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you, and the smile I took from the other you, and the disappointment I inflicted on the even other you, and the harsh words I have let out on the other other you.

I have met many people this year; very different people. I’m not sure if they all concluded it about me, but I can see through most of them like a magician sees through walls. I’m not boosting my ego as much as I am complaining a curse.

I remember I once saw in a movie (or read in a book) about that vampire who can hear the blood splotching a heartbeat produces inside someone’s chest. This is exactly how I am sometimes aware of someone else’s thoughts and feelings. And I was never able to express it justly. That’s why my reflexes always appear in profounder magnitudes; because the intake is always an overdose. I already feel you enough before words confirm my verdict. Often though, someone lies and strips me naked of my sanity.

So, I’m sorry. I genuinely, truly and sincerely apologize for whatever it is that fled my tongue during this ominous year.

One of the biggest themes of 2010 at my narrow end is marriage. I don’t know where I should start really. Many many months ago, I posted a facebook status message surprised at everyone’s low moods. I can’t exactly remember why, but it was just a blue time for most of my friends. A work colleague I barely know made a comment that made surprisingly perfect sense. He simply stated that everyone is miserable because everyone is single. It’s one of the few simple things that make not so simple sense at all. And had 2010 been a proof of that? Oh, God.

Anyway, I wouldn’t want to repeat myself. This blog couldn’t possibly scream more about that subject. And I still can’t figure out many things about it. For instance:

Why do we force our feelings if love takes years?

Why do we skip phases?


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Who would we say yes to someone, or even no?

This year, my uncle divorced his wife. I stopped speaking to my dad for a long while. I got into a relationship that failed. And break ups rain around me like firework shows.

So I’m kind of still figuring things out .. or I figured them out already, yet I am still unaware of the happy fact.

I don’t know. But my awareness of hope,

is strong.

I admitted myself in the Higher Institute for Islamic Studies in Foreign Languages for the first of November. Feeling excruciatingly empty and developing an advanced level of fear from being alone in my own head, I took the step unthinkingly.

The Institute lies on the other side of town, my day has shifted dramatically and my life suddenly turned into a movie about transportation in Cairo.

I would wake up at dawn sharp as a knife. Take the bus to work (yeah...), and then after work take the bus to Nasr City, and then take either the Metro or a taxi back home, three days a week, 16 hours outdoors a day.

One month later my body literally perished. I reached novel levels of exhaustion and fatigue and my mind actually succumbed to only serving its pure biological functions. But to no avail at the end because all screamed nostalgic to my old system, and with newly added work pressure, we (me, my mind and my body) declared surrender. I didn’t quit. I even still go on Saturdays (even though I skipped two...). My perfectionism tells me that it knows that I know that eventually I will drop out of the whole conquest of finding my worth far across town, but I would like to believe in the truth that says what you can’t have all, you shouldn’t leave all (or whatever the English translation of that proverb is).

About the institute. It is AMAZING. So amazing that I kept being impressed four weeks in a row. Professors are professional, as in really professional, in contrast to the semi-teachers back at my own college. The courses we study are downright enthralling, and the people there are lovely and full of enthusiasm. It’s a four year study and you’d be graduated as a reliable preacher in the foreign language you opted for. I love it and inshaAllah I will never quit. I find balance there, a dreamy land with movie-like people who actually have their lives figured out. That’s a keeper! Besides, I found a peculiar sense of self when I constructed a website to facilitate our academic studies there. Don’t laugh, but remember how the insomniac Edward Norton in Fight Club used to attend AA meetings to help him sleep? Yeah, something along that jagged line. In a bright sense it felt like cracking the shutters and being hugged by the sun rays for a while. It didn’t last long. Life beauties usually don’t; always so rare and squirmy and fleeting.

Magic:

“The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.” - Maya Angelou, Letter to my Daughter.


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Reflect all you want, Ibhog. All your heart loves. All your soul needs. Connect your dots. Heed the signs. Watch God. Wait. Give up, or in. Weave misery, or happiness. Daydream, or wither.

But don’t suffer too much because it was all written once anyways.

Back in July I wrote:

One thing I’m learning the hard way these days is that no matter how you try, you will never be able to harness the feelings of those around you. And no matter how much you might influence them, you never are sure your spills will last the night. And no matter how many times your kindnesses will mislead you into very dark dungeons, you’ll never give them up.

About resolutions/lessons I would say:

� I have been wronged this year, profoundly. I am the main villain in the plot. I should try to find more room within myself for myself.

� This year was anything but typical. Next year, all I want is for the power of routine to crawl into my life and lull it into stability.

� I would not give up or quit but I would put off my dream for now. The ground needs irrigation before seeds can find good soil.

� Love is the end of things. It’s a journey. Co-existence is the start of them.

� Love is first a rational because and then eventually an unbreakable no-matter-what.

� A break up is imminent when the two in question make sacrifices they feel are more than enough and they still don’t meet halfway.

� It’s better to be confused alone.

� I am an overly kind and selfless person. This is a blinding fact that was the reason I spent my entire self and ended up in debt for life.

� I will not give up the trait. I will, however, give up unconditionally the ones who abuse it.

� I want to focus on my career and be the special one I used to be.

� I want to be on better terms with God.

I end this series with an excerpt from Maya’s commencement address:

“Look beyond your tasseled caps

And you will see injustice.

At the end of your fingertips

You will find cruelties,

Irrational hate, bedrock sorrow

And terrifying loneliness.


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There is your work.

Make a difference

Use this degree which you

Have earned to increase

Virtue in your world.

Your people, all people,

Are hoping that you are

The ones to do so.

The order is large,

The need immense.

But you can take heart.

For you know that you

Have already shown courage.

And keep in mind

One person, with good purpose,

can, constitute the majority.

Since life is our most precious gift

And since it is given to us to live but once,

Let us so live that we will not regret

Years of uselessness and inertia

You will be surprised that in time

The days of single-minded research

And the nights of crippling, cramming

Will be forgotten.

You will be surprised that these years of

Sleepless nights and months of uneasy

Days will be rolled into

And altering event called

“Good old days.” And you will not

Be able to visit them even with an invitation

Since that is so you must face your present.

You are prepared

Go out and transform your world

Welcome to your graduation.


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Congratulations.”

Farewell 2010.

Welcome 2011.



93

To Confess About This Blog

The vocabulary is enduring a serious drought today, but I’m going to try to express what I want to say justly inshaAllah.

There’s this movie I once watched where the heroine decided at some point to, and I quote, ‘suck the poison’ out of her life. I remember astutely how special was my identification with that statement.

These days in Ramadan, surrounded by the spiritual atmosphere and the calmed down prospects, one often thinks about right and wrong in their life, about their mistakes and what they ought to do about them, about people they met and those they are yet to meet, about the past and the future.

Amidst the monologue and the ongoing, sweet purge, I can’t help but take notice of an intriguing phenomenon: the continuous rise and fall of your inner peace towards things in your life. A thing in your life can be what you simply do every day, something you never really thought would trouble you; but somehow the closer you get to your Creator, the closer your soul flees from under the grip of its shackles – your inner peace is suddenly stirred. It’s as if your soul is set out on one mission: to suck the poison out of your life.

Thinking about it, it makes too much sense. The bigger part of this world’s suffering wages inside our once-was pure souls. Your soul is a transparent organ, so delicate and fragile, but that has enough capacity to absorb all your troubles. Think of it as a soiled distraught sponge at times, and as a shining, ethereal piece of white at others. This holy being truly is a piece of God. Once it takes the slightest note of fresh air, it utterly grasps for light. It does not hold back its want of releasing all the grime inside.

Our souls don’t settle for the half felt light, and they don’t stop in the middle of tunnels. Our souls are true warriors, survivors. They could undergo a yearlong famine, and with one morsel of a prayer, or heartfelt thanks to God, they fly, subhanAllah. They soar up high, through gates in heaven and across the stars, to the true home of Allah.

So this is exactly what I’m feeling right now. Some things suddenly stopped making sense, they lost substance and importance all at once! While other things fell back in place so strongly and they feel just right. My God, the number of times we yearn for this, for something to just feel right! We don’t want to fathom it, we don’t really want to explain it either; we just want it to feel right. To complete the sentences of our sighs, and to not prick the depth of them in pain.

I want to suck the poison out of my life. There’s baggage that’s wrapped in dust in the basement. I need to get down there and throw it all out. It won’t be easy, but the comfort is definitely worth it. I have tried it before and I don’t know why I ever stopped.

Part of this spirit-purging is the simple act of admitting that I was wrong. To tell people who still believe that I think I’m right that I’m not; that I regret this and that, and that that’s not me anymore; that that in fact was never really me at all. That I’m breaking out of an old, rotten shell. That resurrection isn’t as much fantasy as it is a constant fact of life, for those who follow it to the end. And most importantly, to forgive myself.


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This blog, shockingly enough, is indeed one of the things that sometimes agitate the still pond of my peace and harmony. I was talking with a dear colleague a few days ago about marriage and me picking a wife. Something fled my tongue, and I knew it was too late to deny how right those fleeing statements usually are. I simply don’t want my future wife to read this blog and by any means decide if there’s future.

It’s a story that’s so long and complicated I might as well start another series of posts! But, it’s enough for me that this is what I’m feeling. My blog was a great place to exercise writing, flaunt my eloquence and enjoy attention. None of these are things I want my wife to accept me for.

I want her to accept me for a stream of millions of other things, things I’m quite sure the blog doesn’t currently speak. I remember that I told someone before that what this blog reveals about ibhog is a weak 2 or 3 percent of what he wants to say.

I closed this blog before, and I’m currently declining strong, similar signals from the universe to do that again. The thing is, closing the blog before wasn’t really wise. It was painfully extreme and my passion towards the written word was left crippled and hurt. What I can do this time, however, is to simply change the stuff I write about.

I don’t know.

No, I do know. I just need God like no other time, as always.

I sincerely hope you continue reading for me though.

yalla rabena yehdeena lel taree2 el sa7 gamee3an,



95

Forgive and Forget

Last Wednesday, in the confines of a very small room at work where I secluded myself away from distractions and noise, in a close to successful attempt at concentrating on my humongous Actions Items list, I tried to write about Self Love.

I failed miserably.

My muse is deserted elsewhere, obviously, with so much going on in my life these days.

There’s a post I wrote about forgiveness a long time ago, it goes as follows:

People.

They forget and forgive, but they never forget who forgives, and sadly, they never forgive who forgets.

I’m sure if they did forgive who forgets, they will finally stop forgetting, because people never forget who forgives.

So, just forgive unconditionally and all will be fine.

It was one of those times when I preferred word-craft to substance, or at least that’s what I think.

Also, one of the amusing quotes I hunted down in the forest of my archive is a dear excerpt from one novel:

“What Father Michael had conveniently put out of his mind when he dreamed up a meeting between June and Shay was that in order to forgive, you have to remember how you were hurt in the first place. And that in order to forget, you had to accept your role in what had happened.” - Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart.

God, how many memories does this single quote bring to me?

So, thank you, you. You showed me once how beautiful it is to feel safe with someone. You really did. I used to think of you as that person whose mere presence in my thoughts helped immediately identify some emotions that were very hard to even name. You were so real. During one night, my head was bullying my soul in the most vicious of ways, and I don’t know why the thought of you ceased to visit me at some of those foul moments, but it finally came, and every bad thing went away.

You used to go inside the room of my chest and clear away that which blocked my sigh. You used to be my need for you – you used to be more real than anyone I saw. You’re one reason I kept a tie to my past, to my Mom and especially my Dad, and to whom I once was, and to whom I believe I’m turning into, these days.


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I wish you happiness from the deepest of my heart. And I thank you from its bottom, for every word you uttered that gave me hope, for every subtle cue that made me believe in myself, for your wits and the laughs, and for the good times.

And for that call when everything went dark behind my hot tears one day. And most importantly, for disappearing from my life; it was really for the best. Be safest, and be who you are-est, as usual. You shall never be forgotten.

I’m the kind of guy who takes by giving. I’m the kind of man who knows he dried out in hindsight; who simply can’t water the drought anymore. My kindnesses are indulgences and my admiration is for feelings, not persons. I’m built that way and I hope it changes soon and I hope it’s someone who causes that change.

And there’s no harder a struggle in my life than the single conquest towards forgiving myself, or forgetting my past. It’s so hard, really. I can’t. I just. Can’t. I try to, all the time, I try to cure that piece of flesh that’s sewn with what’s left of my strength, but I still have those sleepless nights, when nothing makes sense, when I hammer my existence with my own hands, when my ego sits my past in court, and when my senses stand witness to the fires I ventured into.

I turn to God. If you want forgiveness and forgetting, He has it all. I always feel there’s this white rope cast upon my grasping hands from the sky and I feel that it tows me through my life, like Mom used to tow me in a crowded market when I was a child.

This sense of loss. And then this sense of purpose. Of safety. Freedom from incessant self-lashing comes at me when I’m literally hugged by the intertwines of this white rope. But then at times I lose it, like I can’t keep up, as if other hands – evil hands – grab me from my back, away. Farther. And suddenly, I can’t find my Mom anymore; suddenly, the streets are bigger, there are more people and no one is kind enough to lead me home, and I’m there – a cretin, with grime covering his eyes, sitting at a sidewalk – hugging his weak knees, and shaking.

And he goes and sits by the river of His mercy and weeps his worries out.

When I can’t forgive myself, I go to Him because He’s the only One who can forgive my mountain of sins. He’s the only One who gives me the kind of forgiven present that enables me to finally forget my stalling past.

I don’t know if my very personal post was anything near suitable for a blogging thing, but I just had to write the above words. I’m sorry if it doesn’t apply, and I hope everyone writes way better posts than the depressed prose that’s this one.

Be great, you all.



97

Karma

You think you’re watching out for Karma, you’re so definite about it, but you get blinded from Karma, by Karma. It gets to you and you feel that everything is gloating, from ants walking the face of this earth, to rocks scattered in some deserted land, to the sad dismayed version of your soul.

You decide you won’t care about Karma, you’re so definite about it, but you get deluded into caring about Karma, by Karma. And the universe gloats again.

Karma protects itself from those who think they have it in them to dodge it. No one dodges Karma. It’s spreading its ugly arms in everything. Want to summon its ghostly features? Be sure about something, anything; and it will show itself. Feel the least bit of decisiveness and it will crush you. Preach to someone and it will set an example out of your remains.

Karma is the ruler of all opposites, the master of confusion and the leader of anxiety. Karma is all the world’s anomalies planned in one great version of life that treads on all of our hopes and dreams. Impeccable enough to match with all our tendencies to imitate God’s traits of wisdom, unequivocal will or endless comfort. Like a gigantic animal that feeds on humans who think of themselves as Gods.

There’s but one way to evade its poison. You just need to take a stronger side, to live by a stronger shore: God himself. It’s not only through blind faith or irrevocable trust in His will, but also in following every word He says and in living life knowing that imperfection is manufactured in the very fabric of its form. You rely on none but God. You expect none but from God. You’re sure of none but God. You worship none but God. You care about none but God. You love in God and hate in God. You think of nothing but God. You wake up to His name. You sleep to His divine verses of wisdom. You have faith in none but God. You live to God and die to God. You laugh to God and cry to God. It’s ALL about God because God is ALL.

You take the side of God and He will take the side of you. If you don’t, then you’re switching roles with God, and Karma will drool on the very sight of you.

Sweat not thy efforts my friends, for He is the only way to dodge Karma.

Karma is Judgment Day reaching out into the moments of our lives and telling us how ugly it’s going to be. It’s the most clear warning before death.



98

Mistakes

We do them. We know that we do them. We see them done by others. We know that we see them done by others. We regret them. We know we will regret them. We see them regretted by others before us. We know that we see them regretted by others before us.

But we don’t do anything to prevent them.

We pretend we’re shrewd.

And even though we don’t really know what not to call experience.

We still call them experience.

And we hope that it’s consolation enough when remorse comes.

We hope we’ll be ready for the future.

We’re in denial.

Those are not innocent mistakes.

Those are premeditated miseries.

They don’t give us wisdom.

They take away our sanity!

And we will repeat them no matter what.

I hate them.

I hate myself for making them.

I hate others for making them.

I hate how they show our imperfection.

I hate that we know how they show our imperfection.

And I despise how we consider that very thing as an excuse for them.

Sometimes being oblivious of them is a blessing.

And being so conscious of them is hellish.

And vice versa.

Complicated!

Conundrum.

We still do them.

What is sadder?

Don’t bother...

...for nothing is sadder.


99



100

On Winter

I miss writing. Our country is undergoing difficult times and our freedom is still in the rough. At times, one’s too depressed he literally can’t move. At others though, he’s so excited and hopeful he can’t stand still. It’s raining, and again we’re all united in one front that is now praying to our one God for a safe future.

I had a terrible weekend.

I thought I resolved my winter issues, but the season manages to haunt me every October. The cold and the clouds inflict an inexplicable gloom unto me. I feel sudden silence; one I’m supposed to like but that excretes the clatter of routine at home, the street, and at work. Sounds of utensils clanging during every meal; the daunting howl of the dish washer; the grim creaks of doors; the waking ups of machine gears. The rasping ticks of clocks and the feet thumps I could always discern in the deepest of nights. Dogs hounding here and there. Car engines rattling every morning. Keyboards clicking, earphones ejecting bass mutters and pestering noises around at work.

My nostrils do not fail; they notice the disgust of odors in the air, the burning stinks from bygone hay and wastes forming another cloud of dullness, only a literal one this time, inserting a suggestion of a bonfire hitting the city every night.

I walk slowly because the whips of the cold wind always clutch around me, they curl around my huddled body as rapid clasping fingers, they prevent me from enjoying the fountain of my own youth, and teach me a very early lesson of carefulness and guardedness, leaving my own joys unsatisfied.

I’ve always had bad memories associated with winter, ones that mostly relate to my back-to-school adventures, nauseating mornings, being compelled to deal with incompetent teachers of useless lessons, and shortened nights cut by homework and early dinners.

The year I finished education and graduated from my college, I pledged that I would choose peace with you, winter. It seems that memories aren’t that violable but are rather stolid and just immovable.

Your only trait that I most cherish is when you choose to drench me with your wet presentations. When you decide for your dark clouds to rain on the heads of mortals; you always manage to wash off dirt from the earth, yes, but to my utmost awe and admiration, you wash souls just as dexterously!

You give me romance – the splashing sounds of your rain drops dripping into puddles in streets, against the glass of windows, or hitting the folds of my umbrella, ticking car roofs or gingerly plopping onto my own head, all those audible and ethereal graphic experiences just render me serene and relieved.

You’re really smart, you fool me into believing that perplexities in one’s life go with the rain, you leave me hopeful and cheerful, but when the sun rises, you end your show with rainbows: the happy ending; the kind that urges you to weep because you know that reality always creeps in right afterwards, drags you on your feet and jerks you harshly, leaves you miserable and wan.


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Your lightening and swift rocks of thunder remind me of a beautiful soulmate who is waiting worriedly for me behind the blinds of her colorful lambrequin, and upon meeting me with her eyes, she flees to the foot of her doorway’s stairs, and jumps into my body. She pushes against me with her tender chest, strains up to me from feet that are standing on my own, and gives me the most endearing of looks a man can ever wish for. With your next graphic splash, winter, our lips surrender to temptation. You skillfully seduce lovers into having beautiful pictures of heavenly memories and close intimacies.

How can you combine so much different feelings?

How do you reach into me that way?

For me, you’re the ultimate paradox, you’re the controller of opposites and you’re the ruler of all seasons, you have wisdom when it comes to our innermost feelings and emotions, you heal us, you propel us to face ourselves, and you push us to have resolution.

I just wish that someday I can run loose from those tying memories, but until then, winter, I shall still heart the rain.

And for that, I’ll forever forgive you.

Dear skies: please rain this year.

Ibhog, November, 27, 2011


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“It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and

trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know

who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.”

– Arundhati Roy,

The God of Small Things


103

Wishes

I like it when I stumble upon a beautiful picture and then someone just comes to my mind. It always tells me how much they mean to me. Those times when you find yourself remembering someone, or even talking about someone. So endearing.

There’s this moment when something (or someone) you like bears a dream you start having. Then come those times when it grows unto you, and squats over your idea of the future. When it lulls you to sleep at night, and wakes you up in the morning. When everything makes sense in the castle of it you’ve built high up in your skies.

And then comes this moment when reality starts to seep in from a hidden corner, when your euphoric nights suddenly have unwanted silence, and when your mornings begin to wish to not come. When you start to question things from the start; when you ask yourself what exactly you were thinking.

And so, you start to give up. In a desperate pursuit of common sense, or what others call maturity, you trace your steps back to where they once belonged. To the faint lit room of them; to things that are concrete and sounds that are just sharper. To what’s before blur and what’s behind haze.

You finally surrender, you start to head towards a path so familiar, and just walk. You expect that you’ll fall on your face again, and you will. It’ll then get darker and narrower. And then you’ll be on your knees.

And just then, when all hope’s lost, a cloud kisses another, and gives birth to rain and mercy. A sun rises from within and the road soars up high. You wonder how it turned out this way.

After all, the only consolation after your hundredth failure is the happiness you never saw waiting by the end of that path you thought was surrender.

Life has its ways. How so right the wrong you thought of it was? How so wrong the right you thought of it turned out to be?

Why are you still reading for me? Today at work I told them that this happened before; that at one point I kept posting daily until my sanity imploded. I sleep while my mind writes on the back of my eyelids. It’s too bright at times, and quite green ahead of some.

You’re still reading so far?

Okay.

I love you, then.

Good night.



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Qasas Reflections

The internet disturbs me lately. It’s awkward and just restless. I try to keep away and the more I do the more I prove myself right; I don’t know how to express it justly, but being online doesn’t feel okay like before, at least for me.

“Pharaoh was arrogant and unjust, but God’s plan was to strengthen the weak: in infancy Moses was prepared for his mission, in youth he trusted in the Lord and was guided, in his exile he found help and love and when he was called, he was supported by God.” -Yusuf Ali, Introduction to Surat Al-Qasas.

During my mornings these days, while I prepare breakfast, while I eat in tranquil, and the moment I eye our cassette player, I would saunter to it with food in my mouth, hit rewind and then play. It’s a twenty year old track: a recitation of Surat Al-Qasas by an Imam in Ryiadh who was gifted with one of the heavenliest voices. I remember him quite well. During one Tarawih night when I was still a child, we went there and my dad went to say Salam to him and the man smiled at me then. I remember wishing to be like him one day.

So this track is an emblem not only of the spiritual sublimity it casts upon its hearers, but also of a cherished childhood; of parents who were nothing short of perfection. You know how many of us have perfect couples in mind? Ones that bring hope when it comes to marriage? My perfect couple are my parents. Such are my mornings nowadays, they’re that idyllic. Alhamdulilah.

This Sura is my favorite these days. I think about it a lot. It’s full of lessons and beautiful prose, and it has such timeless, guiding, heartwarming feats. I won’t talk about how it opens with absolute mercy, or how it ends with infinite wisdom. I won’t express how brilliant it plotted the prophet’s story; how it handled the karmic flow against tyrants, and how it preached it as a law woven in the fabric of this universe. I won’t.

I will just mention this:

23. And when he arrived at the watering place in Madyan, he found there a group of men watering their flocks, and besides them he found two women who were keeping back. He said: “What is the matter with you?” They said: “We cannot water our flocks until the shepherds take back theirs; and our father is a very old man.”

24. So he watered for them then he turned back to the shade and said: “O my Lord! Truly am I in desperate need of any good that thou dost send me!”

25. Afterwards one of the damsels came back to him, walking bashfully. She said: “My father invites thee that he may reward thee for having watered our flocks for us.” So when he came to him and narrated the story, he said: “Fear thou not: hast thou escaped from unjust people.”

26. Said one of the damsels: “O my dear father! Engage him on wages: truly the best of men for thee to employ is the man who is strong and trustworthy.”

27. He said: “I intend to wed one of my daughters to thee, on condition that thou serve me for eight years; but if thou complete ten years, it will be [grace] from thee. But I intend not to place thee under a difficulty: thou wilt find me, indeed, if Allah wills, one of the righteous.”


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And now this love story, in his marvelous commentary, may he so rest in peace.

“Here is a pretty little idyll, told in the fewest and most beautiful words possible. Moses arrives at an oasis in the desert, weary and travel worn, with his mind full of anxiety and uncertainty owing to his recent experiences in Egypt. He was thirsty and would naturally seek water. At the well or spring he found shepherds watering their flocks. As a stranger it was not for him to thrust himself among them. He waited under the shade of a tree until they should finish. He noticed two damsels, also waiting, with their flocks, which they had come to water. His chivalry was roused. He went at once among the goat-herds, made a place for the flocks of the damsels, gave them water, and then resumed his place in the shade. They were modest maidens, and had given him in three Arabic words the key of the whole situation. ‘Abu-na shaikhun kabirun‘: our father is a very old man, and therefore we cannot come to water the flocks; we therefore do the work; we could not very well thrust ourselves among these men’

The maidens are gone, with smiles on their lips and gratitude in their hearts. What were the reflections of Moses as he returned to the shade of the tree? He returned thanks to God for the bright little vision which he had just seen. Had he done a good deed? Precious was the opportunity he had had. He had slaked his thirst. But he was a homeless wanderer and had a longing in his soul, which he dared not put into words. Those shepherds were no company for him. He was truly like a beggar in desperate need. For any little food that came his way, he was grateful. But what was this? – this vision of a comfortable household, presided over by an old man rich in flocks and herds, and richer still in two daughters, as modest as they were beautiful? Perhaps he would never see them again! But Providence was preparing another surprise for him.

Sincerely had he rested, when one of the damsels came back, walking with bashful grace! Modestly she gave her message. ‘My father is grateful for what you did for us. He invites you, that he may thank you personally, and at least give some return for your kindness.’

Nothing could have been more welcome than such a message, and through such a messenger. Moses went of course, and saw the old man. He found such a well-ordered patriarchal household. The old man was happy in his daughters and they in him. There was mutual confidence. They had evidently described the stranger to him in terms which made his welcome a forgone conclusion. On the other hand Moses had allowed his imagination to paint the father in something of the glorious colors in which the daughters had appeared to him like an angelic vision. The two men got to be friends at once. Moses told the old man his story – who he was, how he was brought up, and what misfortunes had made him quit Egypt. Perhaps the whole household, including the daughters, listened breathlessly to his tale. Perhaps their wonder and admiration were mingled with a certain amount of pity – perhaps with some more tender feelings in the case of the girl who had been to fetch him. Perhaps the enchantment which Desdemona felt in Othello’s story was working on her. In any case the stranger had won his place in their hearts. The old man, the head of the household, assured him of hospitality and safety under his roof. As on one with a long experience of life he congratulated him on his escape.

As little time passes. A guest after all cannot stay forever. They all feel that it would be good to have him with them permanently. The girl who had given her heart to him had spoken their unspoken thoughts. Why not employ him to tend the flocks? The father was old, and a young man was wanted to look after the flocks. And – there may be other possibilities.

Strong and trusty: Moses had proved himself to be both, and these were the very qualities which a woman most admires in the man she loves.” – End of Yusuf Ali’s commentary.

That’s exactly what I feel...

This is how I feel: I don’t belong. I feel like a stranger, wan and weary. I’m starting to believe that it might not be pathetic after all. The world is racing unto the eccentric in such a miserable pace. One can scarcely find comfort if they know they should seek it and one seldom finds love in its truer


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essence. And of all the beautiful encounters in life, comes those holy verses, with such needed romance, with such a powerful symbol of hope, with such potion to cure one’s utter loneliness!

He is God after all; it doesn’t happen by chance that He should take the words right out of my mouth, for He already knows them. I do not shy away from declaring to Him and all that listens of my prayers for a similar tale. For I exactly feel what Moses felt: tired. I’m a victim of consequences, and I’m even in Egypt. I want to leave, to run like he did, to seek exile. To do Hijra! And upon my word, in the hopeful tones of it, I want to find love just like he, peace be upon him, did. And I want this love. The bashful graceful love. The adamant, polite. The silent, hopeful. The tender and young. I want a patriarchal household, not a haughty, distraught state of materialism.

I’m there in the shade, dear God. I’m looking for springs with weightless feathers of damsels. I pray every day. Every. Single. Day. For this. It will soon be done insha’Allah, I believe.

To complete my nostalgic sensations, I retrieved a Tafsir book from our library – our house of memories. I flap the pages to the paragraph I want to paste to you, dearest readers. Before I write my favorite part down, the most unexpected thing happens: some papers fell out of the book onto my lap, four or five. In her eager, neat handwriting, my mother used to jot down her remarks and comments on the verses’ interpretations. She often did that with the sole objective of transferring her acquired knowledge in visits to houses around the city of Ryiadh. She was a beacon that way; she was a central destination for many of the sisters. When I was still young enough to sneak into the small women only assembly in our home, I could see her preaching and teaching, glowing like a diamond from the above.

I keep telling myself: she’s in you, Ibraheem. She lives through you. Follow her example. Follow her lead. There lies your salvation!

In 2011, I have lived a very distressful time in the beginning. I was convalescing from an eventful year before, and I was undergoing a serious act of purge, of seeking purpose and of sky gazing. There came a time when all I could think of was death; it seemed to be a very comfortable notion at moments; for all the noise that this world never ceases to bring, to stop at once and for all. A revolution in Egypt started, giving way to strikingly new levels of fear and depression. One’s utter confusion climaxed, I believe, during those times.

In the second quarter of 2011, my career took an unexpected transition, and kick started one of the most beautiful, peaceful and redeeming Springs I have ever lived. I’m thankful for those months. It was a time when I did so many things that kept me busy from my plights of mind, and agitations of spirits. I traveled abroad, and felt very special at work, formed glorious acquaintances, and felt loved. Alhamdulilah.

A mild misfortune took place right before Ramadan, and as if it was time for downhill, others followed. I don’t know what made me sadder; the events transpiring themselves, or the sheer fact that they did. I gradually lost my groove and physical fatigue started to visit me because of the long hours I work. An attempt at the future that failed on that timeline, coupled with a mishap at work was very close to destroying my spastic colon. I regained my strength only in November after the feast, thanks to a happy week that I managed to divest out of the mountain that was my irked thoughts.

Last December, I wrote the following about lessons, and here I comment with how it all went:

� I have been wronged this year, profoundly. Myself is the main villain in the plot. I should try and find more room within myself for myself. – This actually happened; I closed the blog for three months and was secluded for a long while. It was worth it.


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� This year was anything but typical. Next year, all I want is for the power of routine to crawl into my life and lull it into stability. – Well, no one could ever say that 2011 was anything near typical, but I think I have went a mile or two into the routine I sought. In fact, now I want to be untypical again.

� I would not give up or quit but I would put off my dream for now. Ground needs irrigation before seeds can find good soil. – Unfortunately, ground still needs significant care.

� Love is the end of things. It’s a journey. Co-existence is the start of them. – All I did was make sure of this fact.

� Love is first a rational because and then eventually an unbreakable no-matter-what. - That one as well.

� A break up is imminent when the two in question make sacrifices they feel are more than enough and they still don’t meet halfway. – I think I was more of evasive regarding this, I was too careful. It wasn’t easy at all.

� It’s better to be confused alone. – This highly depends on what one’s confused about.

� I am an overly kind and selfless person. This is a blinding fact that was the reason I spent my entire self and ended up in debt for life. - I couldn’t help but spend some pieces of myself still. The way my head works makes it worse, oftentimes.

� I will not give up the trait. I will, however, give up unconditionally the ones who abuse it. – This was done somehow, painfully. It wasn’t giving up as much as making certain alterations – many of which have Velcro features.

� I want to focus on my career and be the special one I am used to be. – All I can say is: Alhamdulilah. Alhamdulilah. Alhamdulilah.

� I want to be on better terms with God. – Ya Rab.

Humph. It was a very busy year indeed. In the end of 2011, and by what might have made an impression on you, dear reader, from the introduction of this series, I’m left with a very tired existence, for sure. I’m waiting eagerly for next Spring, because it’s such a happy attachment now, like a lover’s homecoming. I hope next year would all be those months isA.

I don’t really have anything else to say. I have a confession to make and a message to send though.

The message is for the great people who read for me through this year, and who never got tired of encouraging me to be a better writer. I thank you all deeply for everything.

The confession; well, it has come to me in the explained version of itself the realization that part of why I feel my online life is so undone is due to the simple fact that it’s only a means to some end I’m seeking. My online version, honestly, was belatedly found to have been born to a secret purpose that had been wrapped in thick folds of denial for so long. It only became too evident the more distractions unfurled about it; as next year looms, and as I grow up and on terms with it I be, I can’t help but simply accept it after all.

I think that when I find a wife insha’Allah, my online version will forever disappear. If by some interested form of destiny a woman came to cause that I close ibhog because she opened his heart and mind elsewhere, then she’s most probably the one.

I end with this:


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If you are afraid in the deep dark of you, in the cold quilt of you, or in the bleak plain day of you, run to Surat Al-Qasas, and imbibe its meanings, its stories and its lessons. Never let go of it, heart it in, and sing it out. Read its Tafsir, and then read its Tafsir in other books. Listen to it recited, and then listen to it again, and again, until it's etched in your chest, until it's carved in your soul. Cry it away, smile it back, and sigh it over, ponder it, and wonder at the world, and just be…

You will never regret doing this. Ever

Love,



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Said Qutb

During one of our annual vacations in Cairo back when we used to live abroad, my grandfather started teaching me about the Qutb family: Mohamed and Said. I was twelve years old and quite unrefined in literature generally. The enthusiasm that my granddad exuded whenever he talked about Said Qutb was one of the reasons I became who I am now. That man, even though seeing me for only a month every year, contributed to the whole faculty that’s my bringing up in ways normal grandfathers don’t.

They say that one can’t teach love except if they have love. This speaks loads of the failure that are many educational systems, where teachers pretend to give students things that they don’t have, or worse, things that were never given to them in the first place. My grandfather sincerely loved Said Qutb, and not only that, but he was also a teacher in Egyptian schools, a prodigy at education and the Arabic language.

He loved him in strange ways. Said Qutb was always on his mind, and the writings of the great thinker, scholar and Islamic pillar were etched in my grandfather’s mind to the extent that he lived them. Yes, he truly lived them. Our day to day situations cease to leave untouched by commentary that’s inspired by his writings, or contemplated in the same pattern Said used to employ in his reflections about the religion of Islam. My grandfather not only lived that legacy, but he somewhat mastered the way Said looked at things; this whole view of matters, and this unified perception of the universe. The man was talented when it came to harmony, and was even more talented at attributing all harmony to the Creator.

The amazing thing about Said Qutb is the fact that he didn’t start out as our usual scholars, and I believe God’s wisdom necessitated that he doesn’t begin his dedicated life the same way many did; he was rather the outcome of a certain set of circumstances that built him a purpose made of solid marble.

So during one of the vacation days, in the big two-story house of my grandparents, and after al-Dhohr prayer – a time when my grandfather usually starts his Quran session or does some grocery shopping for the house, he would steal me from a very busy play round with my relatives, or a hypnotizing lazy-induced TV session, take my hand and goes upstairs to his room.

I remember the scent of this room until now, with its vintage furnishing and aging mirrors. It had to it a unique sense of wise calm, as if the silence had swallowed in it decades worth of life, and so whenever you venture into its realm, you can’t help but feel it. The room had an extended small chamber, with a door framed in light green and adorned with a large mirror. By the upper left corner of that door was a small yellow light bulb that had an exact counterpart on the other side of the door to help light the inside.

The inside of this two feet room was a library. The empty space couldn’t hold more than one grown up, maybe with a small figure attached to it (me), and a chair. The room’s interior had a circumference of shelves rooted to the floor and extending to its ceiling. The literature that was in this small room’s keeping was humongous, and he knew each and every book of them by heart; what is it about? Which shelf? Which level? Everything.

As I stand there watching, he grabs the chair and stands on top of it and reaches to a relatively high corner and grabs a book. Some dust motes form a cloud that smells of knowledge, appearing


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royally in the yellow haze of that room. He then hits the book against his thigh two times in swift moves to free it from the extra dust, opens it with a smile to make sure he was right about the place, and gives it to me. “Read this,” he says from the top of the chair. I take it, hold it in my small chest, and watch him step down, and turn off the light. And from then on, the life of him who taught me, transcended on me through books just as it did through my Mom (his daughter). Genes of face and eyes here and of knowledge and spirituality there, all spilled themselves in my heart in too many ways. Right now, I close unto my 25th year, and I remember those tearful memories with such a warm nostalgic heart, and a wish to be back there to the eternal pause of them.

Quran has this timeless feat; you can learn about a verse and apply that anywhere at any time. God’s description of His creation is Godly that way, and Said Qutb in his interpretation has magnificently mirrored this timelessness. The best thing about that feeling is that it’s absolutely safe, it’ll give you more security than you’d imagine, because you’d be reading something so powerful it is actually capable of withstanding the test of time. Like a concept that doesn’t budge against universal alterations.

Generations come and go, civilizations rise and fall, and these words stand impervious. No wonder the rare specimen of men who were able to cope with the Quran were denied existence eventually by their fellow humans, you can’t possibly conjure so much faith and escape the evils of this world unabashed.

Back to me; every once in a while I escape the turbulence in the world and stand devout before our gigantic library at home. Mom and Dad had well inherited the reading gene and had spent two decades filling our home with books. And I go to the Tafsir shelves and watch the towering series of ‘Fe Thelal Al-Quran’ by Said Qutb, an assortment of six hard-cover books, black with gold penmanship on them. My grandpa’s version was hard-cover too, but they were white with gold writings; his print was older than ours, and it had his notes written with pencil on the sides.

Our version, however, has my Mom’s notes. They weren’t written in the page margins, but were rather written on scraps of paper that bookmarked the content they were about. And it’s such a heart hugging experience when you’re innocently devouring Qutb’s lines for some part of the Quran that left you wondering, to spontaneously find one of her bookmarks falling on your lap. It makes me proud to the extent of tears.

Said Qutb is part of my life that way. We never really sit now in any family gathering without bringing him up, or having a touch of his words in our conversations, or a light imperceptible effect in the way we co-exist with one another. Even when we gather with other families, we always introduce Said Qutb as a defining attribute of who we are. It most clearly takes place during communes of marriage; during marriage proposals (I proposed once; me, the potential wife and her father spent two hours talking about Said Qutb), engagement parties, weddings and the family introductions that follow; Said Qutb is always a subject there, and it’s usually brought up by my grandpa.

He’s also a subject that defines me at work with those amazing people who know him. The smile that rises on my face whenever a conversation involving him takes place is such a mark in my memories, and even on social networks, when one of the great people online echo back when I quote him, or talk about him, it’s always heartwarming. He wrote:

“ ��8، ��5 وا�8@� �*��8 ��5 ا�0.8J �� ا�@�3ب هFG أن ��0 إ � ا��L ه�ت د�3 �، ��5 و ��3ت� >�ة ��5 و 0 �80!�N OP3' ا� ��8Q-وأدم را ��، واه�ه� وده��4 � وأ��8� -.�0'�8، وأ�(�� (�، ا�38آW وW).J -�، ا%!.�ن -�(V +�وره� وا�Nح !T�3، < ا�Gي -�3رك وا�Rه

�دةا ��5�X� &' ،��)�4 � “ا�3آ(W و �0 ا�.5�3 �0 إ


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God knows how much I love this man. God knows about the tears that escape my eyes when his lines visit my consciousness, or when I land on things that he wrote that I didn’t read before, and that leave me speechless the way I’m used to. He makes me safe, and he’s a bond between me and my fellow brothers and sisters in so many parts of my life. My family loves him; my Mom, Dad and grandpa, to them I owe the sense of belonging that never left me, for nowadays it’s a scarce thing to belong.

I love him. My wife will love him too isA. Our children will love him. And I truly hope we all meet in Heaven. InshAllah.



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A moment

I’ve wanted to write about this since noon. In the neighborhood we have this mosque that’s quite farther from home than others and that has the perk of good reciters. At times, one needs purification, you know. Your typical mosque won’t do here, so you journey the way to the ones with verses in their hearts.

The Imam there weeps. He weeps. In most mosques, weeping during prayer is an incident that takes place some nights in Ramadan across the whole year and that’s it. But this mosque, this young man, tall and thin, wide-eyed with a flowing beard, and a glowing brown spot on his forehead as if it has light beneath it, has some music in his chest that is rare in type. During Fajr, it’s a completely different level of heaven.

On my way to the mosque, I can’t help but feel that I drop sins on the way. I actually feel lighter with each step, and it’s like my soul releases grime and soil, and coughs troubles and worries. I’m sometimes too burdened with my blunders and imperfections, and it’s such a blessing from God, this walking to mosques thing, completely separate from this Dunya and its tying matters.

The moment isn’t when this Imam wept during Surat Qaf, and not when I had released to Him myself in Istikhara. But rather when prayer finished and I was on my way back; there was an old couple. Yes, an old man and woman, with a gait that’s broken but that’s not. Arm in arm, walking in the darkness of the night, and then in what followed of its changing into light. I caught the sight of them ahead of me in the narrow street, and because my pace was younger, and faster, I caught up with them. They were numbing something that’s not talk, and it spoke so much presence, peace and timelessness.

I crossed them and continued on, too enveloped with verses and prayers, too pensive and wistful. Full of questions with no answers. And then full of answers to all questions. In the street, I encountered a bump. My gait by that time had, unbeknownst to me, slowed to the extent that I stopped on that protrusion in the road. I inadvertently then looked up to the sky, now turning into a slightly brighter version, like a sun is being born in its far east.

And then, I sighed.

I sighed, man.

This universe speaks. It does, very richly for sure. Even though for us it’s one big silent kingdom, full of things we can’t hear and sights so uncaught by our senses, it speaks. Its silence is in fact quite deafening. It blocks all other sounds. And it’s such a sweet feeling, it doesn’t irk or agitate, but rather instills you with peace. I stood there for minutes, looking up, and listening to those conversations that took place between those havens and my soul. Such a powerful connection, such a harmonious system that is, us with these skies!

I lost my attachment to this earth. For the fleetest second, I was all up there. Vast. White. Quiet. And just divine.

“And to Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and Allah has power over all things.” (3:189)


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“Verily! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding.” (3:190)

“Those who remember Allah (always, and in prayers) standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and think deeply about the creation of the heavens and the earth, (saying): “Our Lord! You have not created (all) this without purpose, glory to You! (Exalted be You above all that they associate with You as partners). Give us salvation from the torment of the Fire.” (3:191)

I forgot time and then recollected my bearings when the old couple actually approached me from behind with their comforting walk. Their steps kept getting closer, and closer, and I tried to ignore them and focus on the above of me, until the connection had yielded to an end, following the universal rule of pauses; that they are short by definition, that they should touch you and leave you wondering like that, like a pat on the heart, that leaves you absolutely serene.

I looked back and stole one last glance at the old man and woman. Still. Arm in arm, short steps, happy walk, now a very muffled chat is taking place between them. Maybe discussing breakfast, a son, or maybe me. I don’t know. What I knew is, they were a dream.

I go up to my room, pray for us, and sleep.

In peace?

Will I be given salvation from the torment of Fire?



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Saba - Music

“David had the gift of song and scared music, and this is shown in his Psalms. All nature –hills and birds – sing and echo back the Praises of God.” – Yusuf Ali

“We bestowed Grace aforetime

On David from Ourselves:

“O ye Mountains! Sing ye

Back the Praises of God

With him! And ye birds also!

And We made the iron soft for him;” (34:10)

I could write to you long accounts about the music in Quran, and the subtle differences between how it touches our souls and how the kinds of music we know do; but I’m just going to mention one powerful feature of the Quranic music: it can be composed by any human being who’s in love with God.

From little kids by the age of three and four to old people in their seventies, you could recognize the Quran music in their voices. This is one of its miracles: it doesn’t require specific talents or years of mastering specific arts. All you need to do is to fall in love with God.

There was this small Masjid in our suburban in KSA, and the Imam there frequented verses from Fatir and Saba across the years. He didn’t memorize much of the Quran, so it happened quite a lot that he revisited the same verses again and again. This was okay, he was the reason I fell in love with them.

I learned the reason why we can’t be bored of Quran; even though we recite the same verses over and over again for years of our lives, we never tire. It’s because we reflect on them; it’s because we project their meanings on our lives. Our experiences never exactly end, then so don’t our reflections; it’s like a healing companion that never runs out of good advice.

I also learned that if you try so hard to find in Quran what your heart seeks but fail, then your soul is tired and your mind is clouded with Dunya; it means you’re so busy with things you’re not supposed to be busy with. Your soul is not pure enough, and you need to go lie down in the warm pond of Quran and Prayers for a while, so that your soul could convalesce.

I wrote this before: Our souls don’t settle for the half felt light, and they don’t stop in the middle of tunnels. Our souls are true warriors, survivors. They could undergo years long famine, and with one morsel of a prayer, or heartfelt thanks to God, they, Subhan Allah, fly. They soar up high through gates in heaven and across the stars, to the true home of Allah.

It takes time, persistence and intensive care. You don’t push yourself so hard or you’ll break it. Have lots of trust in God and his control over time. Don’t think of it as a penalty, but rather as a way to be grateful for the fact that God had created you in such fine, amazing form.

Quran is the true house of healing.

And so he sat there by the river of His words, and wept.


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Random thoughts

This is an attempt to overcome the current writing block I’m suffering.

It’s becoming an obsession, or maybe it’s just the outcome of an intense dose of insecurity lately (which is pathetic I know), but I tend to have some strange cravings. Silence too, on top of that, and not just your late at night silence, or early in the morning calm, but something idyllic, paradise-like, where you can enjoy the presence of certain things and people, their air and aura maybe. I don’t know.

I’m wrestling with words. It’s an immensely annoying feeling to have it in you to say so much, but you get stuck in that nook called ‘out loud.’ You need someone to listen, terribly, but you don’t know what to say, or how to say it. It’s just... very complicated. You’re rendered wrinkled and wrung. You pretend to be strong, and ready to bear your own burdens, and sometimes, you drink your own poison by helping others, listening to them, making them laugh, and smiling tearfully. Sometimes you wind up giving away your own cravings to others, just so you could feel the joy and satisfaction that what you’re hoping for is real, doable, earthly. And not so unreachable like your own heart is sometimes.

Am I making any sense?

On Wednesday, I woke up too early for my peace of mind. I was having trouble replaying this other Saturday in my life reel, because I was still hurting, so I skipped it this week and decided to wedge my errand inside a work day and see how it goes. And see how I’ll do.

I’m not sure any more of myself.

But my errand went by safely. My taxi driver tried to repeat our latest painful conversation but I kept nodding with my earphones on, playing the loudest music. FYI, you don’t want to know how my mood affected my music. I’m listening to weird stuff. Think: ew!

“Then what are bigger sisters for ya Tu7fa!” – a very dear friend after I thanked her for listening to my babble.

Let me tell you something I learned about myself recently, and not that I’m being boastful, but I found out that I innately care about people, as in, complete strangers. When I’m taking a cab back home from one of my pestering customer visits, I always have this din in my head: should I tell him about the extra block away from the main road, or will he get grumpy? It’s a very silent and quick frustration that doesn’t last seconds before my cynicism. But it always comes first. I have it in me to think of others first, by instinct – the waiter, the customer service agent, the shop girl, etc.

So, on Wednesday I was waiting by the sidewalk in the cold morning, huddled inside one of my sleeveless parkas, doomed somehow by the respective errand, trying but sadly failing to warm my hands in my pockets. My laptop was strapped to my shoulder, sucking the freedom out of me, under a heavy cloak of clouds. And then, out of the blue, I saw this slender girl, veiled in all the colors of Spring, inside a brown sweater and a long skirt on a pair of silver ballets. She was so cold her pale face showed, her gait was startled; back and forth, she glanced at her watch every now and


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then. I guess she was rather late for her lecture. In a weird way, I felt really touched and sympathetic. And no, not because she’s one of those who couldn’t afford my kind of ride. I wasn’t patronizing her. As selfish as I’d sound, I found her utterly beautiful in every sense of the word. Every sense. I kept watching; dew on morning flowers couldn’t have possibly engrossed me more. It was silent, her tenuous arms waving for the passing buses, her neck craning helplessly, and when she couldn’t locate a spot she shrank her delicate shoulders in despair, sending me straight to heaven.

Why would I do this? And what exactly is so awe-inducing about her?

“...and don’t worry about breaking her heart, because it is more likely that you will get your heart broken.” – another dear friend.

I never gave much thought to how I’d feel if something goes wrong in a relationship. All I was focusing on was how she would feel. It strikes me how it clicks on the same cord that reverberates with that cab driver, or against my first step mom when I used to get all defensive to protect my sisters and not myself, how I get mad at the ones I care for because their reckless tendencies at times, or how the scene of someone helpless starts my meltdown.

Or, more importantly, why I never cried after my mother passed away. I remember quite well how tight I held unto my resolve for the sake of those around me, how I chose to smile and clam it all in, and how the deluge of compliments heading my way, praising my strength and patience, made things way worse... and more hopeless. It was thoroughly stupid.

Enough with my ramblings.

“But it has its little pleasures, Ibraheem. This is what makes us sane. It has its rusty stuff, and shiny stuff,” – yet another dear friend.

I considered seeking professional help, because I needed someone with the ability to put the crap falling all around me in concrete scientific terms, and then give me standard solutions. But no... I don’t think I need therapy as much as I need to be on terms with myself.

I am different, as in really different. It was very stupid of me to deny this fact, or take it lightly along the years. It has its own share of suffering, because believe it or not, life shuns you away by default, unless you stand out by yourself. And what pricks others, stabs you. What hurts them, destroys you. What brings their salvation, renders you aflutter.

All my attempts at subterfuge were total failures – false pretenses. Whatever I chose as a cloak; cynical, egotistic, indifferent, or whatever, was all faux. I never was this way, and I think I never will be. I took it after my Mom and Dad I guess. In our family, we’re the ones who care, not the ones cared for.

Back in KSA, I used to have those mornings when you wake up to find your parents talking very mysteriously at breakfast. Ominous, their voice tones make you curious, so you crawl your way to the table, afraid of the usual “this stuff is for grown-ups, give me and your dad some privacy, Ibraheem,” to find them speaking about how X is not happy with her husband. How X calls


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Mom constantly to complain, and that Dad’s next mission was to act as counselor to save their marriage. How Y is sick and needs care, and that Z had a very noticeable belligerence towards M in the latest gathering of whatever.

Those secret meetings taught me two things: people are important, especially if they trust us, and secrets are very precious things that we have to keep. What I didn’t learn however, was the meaning of secrets!

What are secrets?

If inside our house secrets of numerous families were dealt with so safely, then what’s so secret about them?

During one of our annual holidays, a huge fight broke out in the neighborhood at my Grandpa’s. I remember very well how that woman screamed her lungs out before running away to our house to call for help after her ape of a husband hit her (that’s ironic somehow, bad marriage flashbacks, right now), she was covered in tears, her hair dampened by sweat and she heaved in fear and stammered so many words stifled by countless sobs and cries – it was really bad. Mom, instinctively as if she studied it for long years, helped her to a seat and calmed her down, just before she dressed up with Grandpa to prepare for a truce that would gather the falling apart family again.

That woman fled to our house, the neighborhood had two dozen other houses, of people whom I believe would’ve cared just as we did, but somehow people felt safe with us around. I have other countless examples: my father used to and still is the secret confidant of many people inside and outside of the family, for instance.

It’s a gene I inadvertently inherited. We were a different family.

“Mom, why can’t we do this?”

“Because we’re not like others, honey”

‘This’ being many different things that my parents found pejorative of our own principles.

So, I do listen to what others need to say. I have the necessary natural skills to make the exact necessary eye contact to make them feel safe enough, the gestures that will reassure them that everything’s just going to be fine, even if I don’t believe they will. And I never understood those who withdraw and keep away from me. I’m always like “It’s okay,” and then I smile. Not to mention, it comes with clairvoyance, especially with those I love the most, it’s like I already know.

Trouble starts when it’s the other way around, when you are the one who needs help. You suddenly feel that you don’t deserve it! I mean, oh my God. It’s actually very perplexing, the feeling that daunts you when someone shows you passion and love, you kind of find it out of place. But at the same time, you crave it. Things go out of balance.

When they do, you fluctuate between two extremes; you first give with full compassion, in ways that might touch people’s lives, and then bam! Suddenly you withdraw, because you need to take in, you need to be touched yourself, and when you find it lacking, you discover your new addiction. It’s sick business, all out of balance that way. Most of the time, it’s inside of you. Talk about depression.

You show some friend or family member that you really care (and you really do), but after a while you disappear, and it takes so much love and understanding from their side to stick to you nevertheless and believe that you’ll be back one day, that you still have the heart they know in you and that you just need space to get back in shape again.


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Inside my family I could recognize many sadder cases than mine, ones who wound up being resentful to their own children and siblings. I have reached this phase with my father recently, unfortunately. We both have it unbalanced, the compassion thing – this could only last so long. What I’m grateful for is my realization – that I’m conscious of this fact now. I just want to be on terms with it, I want to tame it and have better control of myself and my own needs. Because I think I’d do really good with those I love if I did. It’s my gift and I should use it wisely. People loved my parents, people love me.

But would she?

Answer this: would you rather start your life with your soulmate, or would you rather them join you when you’re ready enough somewhere in the middle?

Some wholeheartedly believe in the saying: “Love is never enough,” yet no one wonders: “What is?!” As if we need something to be enough on its own, which is just wrong. And because we always bounce back and forth between extremes, we stop loving entirely, because: it’s never enough! We turn into adamant stagnant human beings who give themselves the satisfaction of being different and out of the circle.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde.

This is why I’m not really a fan of quotes, including the one I just mentioned, and you know why? Because somehow when it’s read, one assumes he’s from ‘most people’ without a sliver of evidence that they actually are. Heck.

I’m sick of all the riddles. I want to get on track, to join the circle again, that circle we – the intellectuals and the thinkers – strive to break, because we hate the country and the status quo. Well, surprise! There’s no out of circle here. It takes refuge in our heads only. You’ll just suffer or relieve your pain by being dramatic.

By the way, I was never pro-mediocrity that way. But I got thoroughly tired of all the maneuvers. One can hold on for so long.

“I know this might come off as weird, but I’m changing rules somehow”

“How so?”

“Well, remember when I always told you that I will never marry someone unless I’m ready to make them happy?”

“Yes”

“I will never be ready.”

In the software field, we study a nifty concept named ‘a deadlock.’ A deadlock takes place when two events, mutually dependent, and in a rare scenario, wait for each other. They create a cycle that stops moving, because both can’t take the next step without the other taking theirs.

So if I had a dream that requires effort, I need someone to cheer me along, to encourage me to move further, to validate me and love me enough to take in life smiling and score my miles – a woman.

But, to make her happy, I would want to already have accomplished the dream, to have fulfilled myself enough to be ready for her, to have secured the necessary resources for society’s peace of mind.


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I’m stuck. It doesn’t exactly feel good.

And then comes yet another intriguing point; do we marry for these reasons? I mean, what if (I freaking hate these two words) I fouuuunnddd the love of my life, what guarantees can I offer that the moment I make progress (because of her presence of course), I won’t simply go away? Isn’t that the role I pictured in mind anyway? Or am I supposed to be helping her in some way too?

How can one be sure of this? You know what I think? I think love is enough in this context, it’s the only thing that’ll work. You just have to love them more than you love your own dreams. If you don’t, the moment you reach the finish line, you’ll dump them.

Needless to say, they’ll have to think about you the same way too. Talk about Chemistry here.

You know what’s the funniest thing ever? Sometimes, marriage itself as a milestone is the finish-line, and the dumping here is implicit and devious. Ironic, bitterly ironic.

Confession: I was never in a relationship before.

I’m a glutton for anecdotes though, I witnessed some serious crap along my years, and I hate people for it, and the more time passes by, the more unsure I get of my own assets in relationships.

When a man is down, he might need a hundred men to lift him up with all the strength and liver they have. But a word out of a woman’s lips, might have the necessary magic to carry him up like wind carries leaves and petals.

And when a woman is insecure, she might need a hundred women to round a hundred hugs with all the tightness and the safety they could exude, but then comes a flat broad chest to embrace her into her kind of heaven.

And we all know it.

Don’t we?

So what should I do about that part I’m stuck in?

Do I say the word and take my chances?

Or pretend to be strong and row my boat alone?

P.S. I change thoughts by day, don't take me seriously, I'm thoroughly out of balance these days, and I was just venting to my friends.



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I am... not

I am one with the silent fans.

I am my bearer’s curse, and my hearer’s faith. I’m a bed time story, and a taxi ride worthwhile. I steal your worries when you steal my lines, and I mirror you so far into a sigh that prints me in its depth. I’m your anticipation and satisfaction, and I disappoint by my mere absence.

I’m a beating white beneath his dark mountain of worries, and when I shine, it turns into green. I’m his doomed eloquence, and his far dream. I’m a realm away from everyone, yet here I am dancing in a piece of prose.

“But she’s scattered!” I humorously cry.

“I’ll hug her back together!” He accepts her challenge.

I’m everything he doesn’t need, and everything he so wants. I’m his theory of contradiction, and his faculty of confusion.

Let’s call this honest Sunday. This post is currently titled ‘ I am...’ which is a third occurrence in this blog. Self-centered understates it, frankly. Since we’re honest, let me boldly express how much I hate it all.

I dare myself too much these days. If I died, would I be okay with having all of this nonsense published? I remember a thing my father said to me a long while ago. We were talking about music, and we were comparing it to Quran. He agrees that both affect the soul, and honestly I don’t like it when someone denies this fact; however, dad had a very intriguing perspective.

He told me: music takes you to a place and leaves you there. Quran takes you to a place, and guides you from there.

It made too much sense to me. Maybe because I’ve experienced it myself. And since we’re at it, take any writing that lessens people’s pains generally. The thing is, it’s not fair to put emotions, just emotions, into someone’s idea of relief. It won’t be complete; your laughter will only reach the half of it, and even your sadness will hang by a thread. Because, okay, we all need to go down and down sometimes, to completely feel our sadness. We know that to cheer up, you have to just have a cataclysmic mood capsize first. Gibran’s lines come to mind when he talked about the cup and the oven and the whatever.

But, then what?

If our idea of ‘feel good’ and ‘relief’ is this limited and unpractical, then how will we sustain ourselves, let alone this earth we’re responsible for? I’m not judging by the way. I’m an example myself. It’s just that I don’t really like it. Writing these days for me is just an addiction pursued. Who am I kidding? ‘Addiction’ and ‘pursued,’ need I remind myself what those two really mean?

Work has to follow feeling. Everything is moving, everything.


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Okay. Calm down, Ibhog. It’s okay. You don’t really need to hammer at yourself this ruthlessly. It’s not this bad. It’s actually cool to be diverse, and to do something you like.

It’s just that I think it’s important to sit with one’s self every now and then, to put things in perspective and all. To know what’s what and what’s not. To not lose one’s self in that haze of nothingness. Because it really doesn’t feel right anymore.

I like how this post is such an emblem of ambivalence. For me, it’s not sad confusion. It’s me being more mature. I feel it. Like I’m in control, or something.

I still can’t answer this though: would it be okay if I died with all of this online?

How unsettling that is!



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Maybe

Sometimes one is simply not supposed to know about certain things. We tend to think of that as a right so divested of us while in fact it can be considered very relieving. Maybe it works, maybe it won’t. You wake up every morning to this thought and it eats your serene rise and sends your heart into unrest. You also go to sleep thinking about the things that will work out tomorrow, or the things that won’t.

Have you ever thought that you shouldn’t really know? I have this quote put in my business email signature:

“God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.” – Mother Teresa

Some people weren’t very okay with the fact that I’m quoting Mother Teresa. I don’t care who wrote the quote, I only care about its substance. If you look at our Islamic values, you can find this teaching: Tawakkol. It means exactly what Mother Teresa said.

Dad always tells me that at some point I must simply stop thinking and accept the fact that my mind has finite energy; once spent, then it’s done what it had to do. What’s next is out of its league, and reach, and responsibility, and everything.

When you put a seed in the soil and water it, this is what you do; you submit something to another divine process that you have no control over and then you just wait for the flower to grow. If only we thought about life that way, we’d be so relieved.

You can’t excessively water the plant or it will die, and at the same time, you can’t possibly hope it’ll grow without water. We need to know when to stop taking care of things that we can’t control, and we need to learn about taking care of the things we’re responsible for.

Don’t you just love Islamic teachings in this? Don’t you just love how universal they are?

Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t.

Maybe I’ll live. Maybe I’ll die.

Maybe I should just love how God takes care of it all.



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Social Networks

This was me quoting my best friend two years ago. His words are strikingly true to their meaning still. In fact, they’re true to a large extent concerning twitter (and any social networking site for that matter) as well.

“No one cares about you; deep down people only care about themselves. That’s one major reason behind Facebook success; it’s about the way it makes people feel about themselves.

Everyone is just acting as if his life turned suddenly to a Hollywood movie where he’s the ultimate star. Everyone else in his network is commanded to follow the movie events and interact with it. Not because – in most cases – they do care genuinely, but actually because this is the only way to get back attention to their own movie.

The end result is a group of people supplying fake feelings to each other ‘letting them feel better about something they did or a place they went to…etc’ and not building real connections with the ‘so-called’ friends.

This is just a huge information flow eating up my daily precious time & brain cycles while in fact, I just don’t care. My real friends have been always out there connecting with me before the Facebook era.” - My Friend

This friend of mine doesn’t have twitter, doesn’t blog and is not on Facebook and sometimes that’s everything I look up to in him. I feel it every time I watch normal people, with normal lives, with genuine emotions. I don’t know why the best articulated feeling online never really measured up to a simple giggle face to face. I don’t know if something is wrong with me, or if virtual life is truthfully fake. One thing I’m sure of though: it will never ever be the same. It can’t be.

I felt it when I was abroad. I felt that all what’s happening online is such an insignificant detail. Like a bad song that you listen to once, or like a B movie. It’s just not right to keep yourself busy with a bad song! What happens online doesn’t really have much substance, no matter how much we spend into it from our finite emotional capacity.

I remember how parents during the nineties were against things like on-line chat and ‘chat rooms’, and I remember how my Mom used to be very upset about spending time online in anything. She was right. If she sees twitter now, she’d gasp at how massive a chat room it is!

People need to learn to log off more.

This is just how I feel tonight.



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Hardships

When I’m having a hard time, I try to remember those parts of the past when light cracked from inside the very heart of darkness, like dawn crawling through the night sky and eating the dark with its crimson white. I try to remember the time when the pain could not be any more pure and naked, and then it was at once lifted for relief to wash its remains.

I remember how our own lives take care of us, and how destiny is perfected in ways that would bring any one of us back from their falsest whims, and their gravest mistakes, and their most imperfect of decisions, to its normal safe course; to its road that doesn’t have shadows; to its road that goes on and on towards that green country of comfort, with petals strewn around and with breeze that feels like sky.

When I’m having a hard time, I remember that I’m far from the end; I remember that everything is going to be fine, not because it should, but because that’s just how things are; this earth survives, man lives, the tide always lows, the sun is going to always rise, time is always going to adjourn the clamoring court of painful events, and truly, the world is forever going to have giggling babies.



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“My two feet deep closet was floor matted with a velvety cloth. The things hanging either smelled of flowers, of clean laundry, or simply of me. I quickly cleared a space under his left arm, and we both sat in total silence for a while, with our legs stretching out. I was still in my shoes all this time. He didn’t say anything, he was just breathing. My head, now a shy child in the hug of his arm and chest, in its dedicated favorite warm place, was entranced by the music of his heartbeat. It changes rhythm; its quick throbbing after he broke my light fall segued now into a poised old man gait. Every once in a while, he inhales a deep breath and the rhythm goes stronger. I can sense the thuds against my right cheek.

His face leans over my head. “What are we doing?” he whispers.

“What happened to you?” I ask, my eyes closed.”

…

Noha is a figment of my imagination.


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Portrait

He finds a woman, any woman, very intriguing. Not from the eyes of an admiring, lustful man, but rather from the eyes of a contemplative lover of beauty. For him, the entire ecosystem of a female is subject for thinking, research and inspiration.

He’s always very conscious of a woman’s tapestry of feelings. He keeps an imaginary book that records that which he learns with time about each and every one of them. A woman’s sadness is the most powerful seductive. A woman’s laughter is the strongest sedative. A woman’s kiss sucks stress from the soul. A woman’s word of encouragement and cheering on is by far, a revelation. A woman’s touch is salvation.

Women are always beautiful. ~Ville Valo

So he goes on living his days, as a florist in a field full of roses. With his book and a charismatic pair of spectacles, he strolls through. He regards the pink and caresses the yellow; he inhales the sky blue and captures the violet in the clips of his heart. He kneels before the white, and kisses it.

In all those laborious nights of study, by the windows of Spring and its sister seasons, he concluded, anxious yet happy, that a woman by creation has her beauty wrapped in her paradox; her predictable unpredictability, her strong weakness, her cunning naivety, and her ever mystifying devotion to what might pain her.

He surrendered to the fact that a woman is to be lived with and not understood. That a she is subject to acceptance, not judgment; that her roundness is to shape inside something bigger than her prospects; that her softness is for the cruel world a comfortable potion; that to life a lass is what for labor is repose.

And as much as a flower never grows by salty water, a woman morphs into something utterly ugly if she ever tries to adapt the alphabets of other creations. As soon as a she veers out of shape, away from her plan, another hostile range of properties evoke, rather erupt!

Exactly as was she repose for labor. Changed and altered, for them she becomes hell in fullest – a carnivorous botanic discovery that feeds on the very comfort of humankind. In the scheme of her paradox: that also, is never her volition, and in that very scheme, a woman will never admit to being manipulated, even though their very fluid like feature proves it.

He reaches so far into his study and decides to stop. He sighs, closes his notes and looks at the sky thinking: after some bar, a flower’s remaining prose isn’t apt to inspection, rather introspection.

What if, he adjusts himself cozily in the sofa of his imagination, he created his own woman? How beautiful she would be, he joyed! How happy and white! How heavenly and amazing!

He loved his thought. He grabbed a feather and dabbed it in ink and started to paint on the very wall of his room. The sun rays danced along the floor when he finished the latest touches of a face. He retraced his steps and regarded his production. He was awed at his dexterity. He could see in his own portrait, the very findings he spent years studying and discovering. He approached his creation, and resumed his art. A neck, a chest followed. He was infatuated. He, for the fleetest of a moment, forgot about heaven and hell; for the fastest of whims, he thought that occult stage was already behind him; that afterlife is no more than that wall.


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He finished. The last stroke was on her lips. He slid his seat and positioned it right before that graceful formation. That utterly perfect creation, he thought! Those arms and legs, those collarbones and cheek magics. Those ocean like eyes. That stature and complexion, he rejoiced!

His heart was about to sink to other far side of the sphere that’s his earth, when, suddenly, unexpectedly, and yet heavenly, the picture started to shed color! A pink blush exploded by the base of the likeness’s neck, and started to spread. A haze of pale white reached so far to the delicate toes, and gave in to a darker shade around the nails.

The arms breathed. Her chest bore dimension and tenderness. Her eyes shone.

His heart a skipper, he fixed his gaze intently at the face. He inhaled his breath, and he held on to the arms of his chair in a death grip. He was utterly consumed by fear, by disbelief. Like a statue he was!

Her eyes blinked.

Shocked, his heart skipped its last beat ever.

She walked out of the wall. Oblivious, she regarded her surroundings. Then, she kept looking at him, sprawled decrepit in his chair, eyes wide open and dry.

She poked him and swiftly held back her hand in her own chest. The blush in her face she could feel spread to her spine in what she didn’t know yet was a chill.

She hesitated before calling his name, which she never realized she knew.

He didn’t move an inch. She walked to his notes and didn’t understand the symbols; she regarded his feather and ink and had no clue what those are for.

She returned back to him. And in what she learned later was pure instinct, she flowed into his lap, huddled upon herself and put her cheek against his chest and started to cry. She kissed him all day, and her tears were so abundant, so alive that he was wet by night.

If only he saw what he created? If only he knew her story. This story. My story.

My name is Noha, and I took the life of that painter by the brush of his own strokes.

Noha, June 03, 2011


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Really

You.

Yes you, you know yourself.

I would notice if you went missing.

I always notice things you don’t even know you’re doing.

And I would know, even if you stop talking, about all that you want to say.

Because if you grab my heart and flip it to see the other side, you’ll see you. That’s knowing by heart for me.

I would understand.

I would pick you up.

I would smile in your face.

And I’ll hug you when you most need it, but when you least expect it.

And I will make you feel better.

I will.

You have my word.



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Words

Forgive yourself. The balm that’s the palm of your hand: it’s real, Ibraheem, I have felt it. Cherish that. I know that giving up on those who believed in you more than you did once is guilt climaxed, but do know that you can still love them. It’s not the end, yet. It’s life.

It’s okay to miss a moment that everyone else enjoyed, it means your favorite people aren’t all around, yet. Wait. Patience. Do you not know of fate? Do you not know of the horizons of its mercy? There will come a she whose wish come true, is her wish come you. Soon.

Being judged by you is different. It’s okay. The vagueness of you swallows the anger in me. That moment, when you shined your light on me with that red hearted rose of mallow. That moment, my dear, was perfect.

You’re a drawer of smiles and laughs. You’re entertainment. It’s vogue. Don’t be sad about it. They are comfortable around you. You’re safe, Ibhog. You are safe. You are home.

Sometimes, life brings out the worst in people, but if you watch close enough, the worst in people is beautiful. You know why? Because it’s the end of it. Once the worst is out, what’s left is their pure hearts and their yearning to be in your embrace.

And sometimes, my love, life brings out the worst in you, and then it all wraps itself in you with a lesson learned in humility and wisdom. When guilt sheds itself around your deeds, when your conscience curls around your acts, that’s when you become great. Much of the good of this world is owed to the sins of its people, do know that.

Whether you’re close to Him or not, He’s always around protecting you.

Do know that too.

I wish my words for you weren’t that broken. So instead, I’ll give you silence. I know you like it. I know you love the presence of me in your thoughts; an emblem of hope, a figment of a thousand dreams in one. A vision that’s all pauses, I am.

For you.

A message to you: one day, you’ll see that which I’ve always wanted (and needed) you to see. It seems hopeless now, as much as I wish for progress, somehow you dive in vanity. But I know, that the worst in people tows behind it the best in them. You’re reckless and neurotic, but I know, that deep down your heart, someone will light a candle one day. I just wish, then, that you’d remember my tears.

Imagine that we never knew the moon existed, and then we woke up to see it a perfect white circle. How will that feel? Now, imagine if each month we were to forget it ever existed, and then that one night we woke up to see it a perfect white, again?

Am I that usual for you now? Do I have to disappear, so that you’d miss me? So that you’d know my real worth? Am I already a crescent? Or the shadows of your doubts finally had me? Whatever happens, I love you. You’re you, you know. You were never a choice. You were destiny, for my heart.


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Complete love is that moment when the idea of them being away never even crosses your mind. In the details of your fabric, that idea for you is tantamount, in sense, to the sun rising from the West. If it takes place one day, then it’s the end of everything.

I count your hugs. I don’t know the figure, I just know that I count, and that each time I’m in your arms, I forget where I stopped, so I start all over again.

I’ll go find you now.

Noha, February 11, 2012


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I believe

I believe in belief. I believe belief brings comfort to our minds and happiness to our souls. I believe belief shouldn’t be explained.

I believe in a good laugh and in a tear that’s sincere. In a lopsided smile, or in a pout that solicits compassion. I believe that speaking to God makes one glow. I believe in a woman unbarred by oppression and unmarred by the world. I believe that being oneself is the most special about one, the hardest thing to learn, and the most beautiful to those around.

I believe that the past is there for the future and that the present is just the link we misuse. I believe that imperfection is more perfect than perfection, with the right ones. I believe in silence. I believe in presence and in absence. I believe in love that comes from moments, not for moments. I believe in an hour of hate, not more. I believe in a lifetime of companionship, not less. I believe in slow and steady. I believe in sadness and in happiness. And in how both are always together.

I believe in a hug that’s unexpected and in a touch that’s unpredicted. I believe in a kiss on the forehead, even if skins don’t touch. I believe in mothers who don’t have children as much as I do in those who do. I believe in words unspoken and unwritten. And I believe in those who still manage to read them.

I believe in an us and their home.

I believe the words ‘berry’ and ‘chimera’ are so beautiful. I believe when someone’s told the truth about themselves, they fall in love or they hate. I believe in change and in chances. And in all the glances.

I believe heaven is there for those who miss it at night and hell is there for those who never remember it. I believe in being small and being young. I believe in strength and in weakness. And in how both are always together.

I believe in dreams that come true and in dreams that never do. I believe in signs, but only every now and then. I believe in marks left and in prints in the air. I believe memories and thoughts are living beings we don’t see or comprehend, just like the angels.

I believe in white and in green. In petals that are not too dry and in leaves that are cold against your cheeks. I believe in flowers that follow the sun and in yellow, in the sound of water and the ruffle of wind.

In a cold pillow with a warm shoulder.

And then in you and me.

And in how we’re always together.



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Ramblings

These days, I can’t categorize the countless thoughts running through my head. Someone comes and asks me: “What’s on your mind?” or, “Is everything okay?” and I go blank because I get self-conscious of the fact that I can’t name my thoughts. Hence, when I want to write a post I fail to allocate a meaningful title!

So, this is a Friday morning. When it’s like this in Spring, a season that’s not too warm for your skin, and not too cold for you energy, my mood relaxes. I go to the fridge, grab a bottle of cream soda, and here I am sitting inside my blog – the part of my life that still makes some sense - to practice my addiction.

Let me tell you about a weird obsession I have, one that I think was born during my childhood back in KSA. During summer there in Riyadh, and it was truly blistering at day, whenever I get back home from prayers or shopping or whatever, the moment I enter the house, I’ve always embraced how zesty it was when the cold conditioned air hit my flaming face. Not only that, but I’ve always found it very peaceful, the muttering sound of that magical machine: the AC. It urges you to sag and sprawl on a sofa, until your body balances its temperature again.

That was crazy, wasn’t it?

Having a muffled tone play in the background is unfathomably relieving. You’re dating someone, you go to your flamboyant restaurant, order an extravagant meal and enjoy a designed lifestyle, but you forget that if for a minute the music in the background stops playing, everything is screwed.

You prefer to have coffee in one of the cafes by the Nile, because again, the water sounds very peaceful. In the fitting area of your favorite cloth shop, and when you go inside and watch yourself in the mirror, the music emanating from that invisible corner, always makes it a different experience.

This is why I’m not exactly a fan of Winter. It’s not only very cold, it’s mystically quiet! I always miss my peaceful background sounds. They take place in Winter when it rains – the drops popping and making that fantastic show in the streets and on the surfaces of all glass, but when the rain stops, all’s dead again, the world stops speaking. I think I’m addicted to conditioned domestic comfort. I love Spring because it usually brings back the company. I guess that’s why I like it, it’s considered company – relaxing and not intrusive.

Hmm... I’m still wrestling with words. God, I hate my writing blocks!

Isn’t it strange, how two questions word out the same thing, but at the same time, they word out completely different ideas because of the one who’s asking? Not that the answer would be different (because that would be lying, no?), but because people are always afraid of being registered in someone else’s mind as: interested in X. X being a topic like, well, love relationships, personal memories or private secrets.

Let’s not take the matter seriously, it was fun after all to try out something new for a change. I just observed that phenomenon: a huge problem in communication.

It happens in real life. We want terribly to ask someone something, but we can’t stand the idea that we’re the one asking it! Weird sense of pride maybe, but anyways, I think it’s a really advanced case of denial. Not to mention the problem of receiving that they have sometimes, which is: I want to


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say something, but I can’t, so I’ll pretend I’m innocent until people ask me about it, and then, because I promised I’ll answer, I will.

I’m no exception by the way – actually if you think about it, I do that all the time. Bummer. You start setting up baits around your prey, laboring your butt off for answers, when all you can do is simply ask. Instead you dig a hole, name it ‘illusion,’ and then jump right down there. Hint: there’s no bottom. Why? Because it’s a freaking illusion, that’s why!! Just ask, and you’ll notice how the gap shrinks tremendously. I experienced that with family members – it worked.

Again, I’m no exception.

Bored of my philosophy?

Well then, watch me contradict myself, 2010 is all about inconsistency.

So yeah... in case you didn’t get it yet, I do actually like someone.

Remember the series I posted back in October about my uncle’s doomed marriage? In the last post, and when I was showing off my unending philosophized wisdom, I said that when two fall in love, they skip a pretty critical phase: the are-we-compatible-with-each-other phase. And then, they hit a wall, very hard. So I kept repeating: compatible is the word, compatible is the word?

So, if on a scale from one to ten, the most compatible I felt with a woman, was two, then what this means is, if I suddenly find someone climbing up that hypothetical scale, then of course I’ll like them!

Feelings here are irrelevant (although a part of being compatible is to have different feelings than usual), despite the fact that we naturally tend to have strange kinds of reflexes – you know when you always love back (and not love), when you always fall for praise (and abandon caution), when you crave and accept reassurance (even if it was false), when you always laugh (even if you misunderstood the joke)? So yes, of course, I’m human, I instinctively have these knee-jerk reactions.

I’m not in love, I’m just having a first. And I hate missing chances.

The moment you start thinking about the words: “I’m having a crush,” boom!

Congratulations, you already started it. This is the science of make believe. Talk about things – they happen. Scratch an old wound – it ruptures. Over think – you’re screwed. Decide you’re depressed – voila, you are! We need to learn how to use brakes: there’s this fine lady, I see us happening, I ask God to choose what’s best for both of us. Period.

But then again, I always hurt when I talk about it. I don’t dwell on the why of it as much as I’m enjoying my first, and I have only God to ask for happiness. Some women you think of as friends, secret keepers, sisters, mothers, daughters – but there’s only one of this woman; the one that never fails to cross your mind without those one hundred thousand fliers with the word ‘wife’ flailing all over your world.

You start dreaming of the ring, the wedding, the house, the family van and the three kids. You remember her face in every movie and episode. You find yourself whispering her name without even realizing it. She’s the one you think of before your head surrenders to the pillow. She’s the one every hardship reminds you of, because simply she’ll make it a lighter burden.

You see the moment she goes to the mall on a Saturday morning, swipes the credit cards, and gets back – kids’ faces smudged with festive colors, and she having that crooked responsible motherly wifely beautiful smile on her perfect face. The one you see every morning when you wake up, the one you go to bed with, and the one you have breakfast with. You read with. Write with.


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Laugh with and cry with. Watch movies with. She’s the one who just makes sense, in a white dress, a colorful garland and that bouquet!

There’s always respect – a different kind than the one you have for others; you start to think not about how you’ll deal with this woman, but rather about how you both will deal with others. How you both would deal with the world! All your problems suddenly seem insignificant, you embark on a high priority mission to fix everything in your life, just to be ready enough for her. You wake up every morning with one objective – to complete yourself.

Wow. Women. Again, they don’t just make great men, they make everything great. They nest. They build. They do. They fix - even men. They’re pretty much the reason to everything on this earth.

You see potential – a heaven-like chance at happiness. Loving them doesn’t even begin to compare with the beauty of living with them – that’s how potential life partners happen. So it’s only normal to hurt when you talk about it when it still seems far a happening.

So, again, you just have God and your prayers. In fact, you almost always don’t have but God and your prayers. So, dear God, in the middle of the ocean that is my sins, on an island black as the soil that is my bad deeds, I ask you, even though I don’t deserve it, for forgiveness, amnesty, blessings, happiness. And this woman.

Amen.

Al-Kotob Khan at Maadi is a different story. Even though the ‘shop around the corner’ dream is obnoxiously used by girls thanks to the renowned movie, that doesn’t deprive me of the chance of having it as well. A passion for writing? Check. Reading? Check. Kids? *yawn* Check. Book shopping? Hell yeah! Check!

Speaking of the things I share with women, someone once told me this:

You’re the first guy I know who openly talks about how he likes Grey’s Anatomy.

Ouch.

I grabbed Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss – a Man Booker prize winner. To add yet another item to my to-read list. I wish you could see my room. Not that you’ll judge me, but you’ll also patronize my sad self. Confession: I need someone to take care of me. Oops, thank God Marwa didn’t hear that!

As you already know, I’m a contributor to READ Newspaper. In March, I managed, thanks to God, to interview Jodi Picoult. Can you believe that? Yeah, I don’t either. It wasn’t much, but it was something really cool. I urge you to buy yourself a copy from Al-Kotob Khan and tell me what you think about it. (By the way, if the one who designed the outlook of the article sees this one day: THANKS, I LOVE YOU!)

So, I was strolling from this bookstand to that bookstand, and amid my ‘how the heck am I going to read all that’ thoughts I spotted Jane Austin’s Emma. Honestly, for the sake of my destructed self-esteem, I was kind of looking for something I have already freaking read! Woop! And then it hit me. Hey, there’s something I want to blog about! But not the novel per say, just a theory I developed lately. It’s about... umm... Emma Cases.

Let me give you a quick review of the novel. Austin describes her protagonist:


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“The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The dangers, however, were at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.”

Emma had a posh life; powerful, comfortable, unadulterated kind of faith in her own skills at matchmaking. Throughout the plot, the genius of Jane revealed how blinding self-confidence, out of balance, can be. Emma, in a series of unfortunate events, matched Harriet (a young unrefined friend) with someone who was loving her instead. And in the story, she thought she loved a handsome young man, who never loved her back. And in the end, she married the one she never even considered as a husband, but rather as a dear friend to the family, and a brother of sort. She had everything go wrong with her and against her judgment, and Karma was at its finest ruthlessness with Emma. You think you understand life, only to find the brick thrown at exactly the middle of your stunned face. And to add to the confusion, it all works out!

An Emma case, according to my ill-developed theory (in contrast to Jane’s prodigy of course, ahem), is when you wrestle the power of typical phenomena. We have this tendency to stand out, create a story, and star in the anecdote. So we run away from quintessential decisions, and we sadly forget the fact that for anything to become the vogue, is that it is right in the first place. We only see our slightly-more than fair share of misleading exceptions.

Marriage is a defining example in this. Friendships (or other sorts of relationships) between men and women who deprive both parties of more-than-great opportunities at happiness, because we took it for granted that it won’t work. While, in that Emma case, in your exact case, you’re the only ones who’ll actually work out together. You keep maneuvering through life, back and forth, up and down, while what you’re looking for is right there in front of your denying eyes. You just have to remove the extra unnecessary cloak of bad experiences, and look.

Beware of Emma cases, because they’re the only ones left with happy endings. If you’re in one, well, good for you!



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Shore

You know how sometimes what or what not to do is too gray? When you lose the line? When you lose sight of the shore?

During those moments, you usually need someone who knows you better than yourself. Someone who’d tell you things will be okay and you’d believe them just because of who they are and what they mean to you.

Sometimes, you actually meet that someone on the way, in the middle of that sea, far away from that shore.

And then it’s all okay.

Because then their sea becomes your shore.

Ya Rab..

Ya Rab I know you love hearing me call, but I too love seeing you answer.



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How can so much taste in life be added by only one person?

How can so strong a presence swallow you by their absence?

How can so absolute a reason for fighting find you by their side?

And

How can so powerful an urge fight you for not waking up from the

dream?

How can so undone a past be so unknown a future?

How can so much beauty see you in the haze?

And

How can so much agony suffer you in its vastness?

…

How?!


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The Cashmere Scarf

Around the end of my trip to India last year, my friend and I went to a gift shop. We had told our driver that we want something that sells products of good quality for a fair price and he referred that one to us.

The salesman was from Cashmere and his name was Hashim. He was Muslim, Sunni. We ventured into the two story shop; it was quite small and kinky, connected by a stairway that looked like a dancing snake. The moment we were in, I felt hot and it was dark. Hashim soon turned some switches and the air conditioner and the lights went on.

The shop had all kinds of Indian handcrafted souvenirs: small elephants and wooden chests, marble boards and golden bells, portraits of ancient warriors and the like. On the second floor he was selling clothes, woolen rugs and cashmere scarves.

There were two kinds of scarves, the pure cashmere with the velvety touch on the tip of your curious fingers, and the other half-cashmere, mixed with less expensive material, which was really good but not perfect. It was imperfect good, like all of our lives when we’re in the mood.

So I stood there watching my friend scratching his chin and thinking about the women in his life and who will like which color. He was picking three of them. I kept watching while Hashim chatted with us about Islam and Egypt, about Sunna and Ibn Taymeya. He impressed me. All those years in Egypt and I have never met a salesman who even knows who Ibn Taymeya is. Hashim knew him and stated so elatedly that he holds utmost respect for the scholar.

The very handsome man made a generous discount to my friend, and though verily encouraged to buy at least one of those red soft huggers, I didn’t know who to buy it for! It was a sad realization. I don’t really have someone that special. I have three sisters and I love them, but I knew they won’t use these scarves. I let my head fall in sadness.

I didn’t find the thought of buying a cashmere scarf for my future wife very encouraging either. I don’t know why. It struck me as sadder!

We left the shop with his cards. The shop’s name was Safwan, although I don’t remember spotting this information on our way in. We traced away towards the auto-rickshaws strewn by the main road’s side, while my desperate thought gained strength.

The above was written several months ago in a series about that trip to India. Even though the story is now closing onto its first year, my inclination towards the idea never lost its momentum. It’s always an enjoyable thought when it visits me, to buy a gift for someone you haven’t met yet, which speaks richly of how in love you are with the idea of them, and how much it means to you. Some would think it’s sad, but I would like to corner it into a special emotion; a surreal mix of waiting and readiness to love with all your senses.

Doesn’t it amaze you your kindness sometimes, just as does your lack of mercy on others at other times? Do I employ crippled word craft, or do I just go with the vent of my words as they come?


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This time it wasn’t a trip to India. It was a short trip to Paris, much more beautiful, and far more romantic, where seedlings of feelings grow into completeness; it truly is a magical place. Most of what I’ve been hearing about it turned out to be truer than it’s told. Now, I could contest for a long series about that trip, and I could linger all animate and sappy in the umpteen of moments that started there and never ended. I could speak of how everyone there is candidly beautiful, simple and human. I could write to you about the narrow alleys and cobblestones, about pastry heaven and breakfast scenes. About coffee, flowers, the air... and the rain.

But I won’t. I shall save it for the special one that’s the hero of what I intend to write instead of it. I know fiction more than I think I do. Fiction for me was never anything different from sheer reality. My belief in the substance of metaphors and ideas never ceased to grow stronger. I sometimes lurk in daydreams where every emotion, metaphor and simile is a full-fledged human being, or a fantastical being, superior to human. I believe we’ll meet those persons when we die, and when the stature of us will just be our souls in this world beyond world that is called Barzakh. A midst, a passage from your grave to your summons later on.

I believe that world influences ours, in ways we can’t even fathom. I believe that world is lived by meanings, ideas, standards and morals. I believe faith over there is a series of mountains and viciousness is a river of blood. I also believe that it is the world our Prophet, peace be upon him, saw in the journey of Al-Meeraj. Where our deeds have stature, substance and a will of their own. I also believe in the logic of repetition there mentioned in the stories and our dreams; it’s very rational for an idea to have some kind of form that always repeats, a movement that doesn’t cease to come around again. It is what it is, an idea, it’s a short lifetime. An idea. If it had a body, or a scene, it would be very short. With our notion of time, it’ll just go on repeat.

God I digressed.

So think about it. A heaven is promised there in those kinds of reflections, it’s like the epitome of contemplation. For your idea of a world to go beyond borders, as they say. So this is fiction to me, it’s even more real than my world. I hold utmost respect for imagination and I heed its wild revolutions; I believe in its power, control and will. And I believe that inside the mysterious world I was talking about, imagination is like a gigantic bird that has wings reaching into inscrutable horizons.

Women with their soft nature click with soft fabrics. Cashmere’s velvet softness, on the skin of a happy woman, is usually perfect. Men shouldn’t try and understands women’s infatuation with things, they only need to understand that it’s a fact, and that they need to employ it in their expression of love and respect. So yeah, the moment I eyed the posh shop in the Champs-Elysee as I was strolling that night in the lights of the infamous boulevard, it hit me.

Indecision overpowered me here, not because I didn’t wish to buy the gift, but because somehow I haven’t spent enough time with the thought. I needed to. I needed to build a fantasy around it, to imagine the moment I’ll get it, and the long time I might have to keep it in hiding, and then the finale of it, when I hand it to her who deserves it. So I let the shop pass me by, with the self-promise that I shall revisit it again before I left.

What I liked the most about that was the fact that it didn’t have a name on it. It was a pure gesture, free of subjects; it believed in itself, too much I’m afraid. It shall risk disappointment, or exasperating wait. It can even be rejected one day by the fidgeting nature of the soft sex, but it’s prepared. It believes that it’s sufficient upon itself, for it’s in love with itself and in pride of its meaning.


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My last day comes. A humongous mall by the Opera in Paris. A building dedicated solely for women’s products, I venture triumphantly into the kingdom of French beauty. I have to admit that it was just like in the movies: wedding rings and cosmetics, dresses and bags, brands and models – all of it. But my destination was clear, third floor, small white shelves with colored cashmere all over them. They were like twenty different colors and styles, and I stood there dumbstruck by the variety.

The shop girl tells me that it’s indeed always a tough moment, to choose. I didn’t spend much time though. I narrowed down my choices to plain and simple, chic, to the point, and cashmere. A scarf that’s beautiful, alhamdulilah, inshaAllah. I have it wrapped and on my way I go.

It was worth every step I walked there and every word I uttered here to you, dear readers. One day, it shall rest comfortably hugging the chosen one, around the shoulders maybe, or kissing her neck, I have no idea. One who I hope won’t keep me waiting for long, for I’m eagerly waiting to tell her this story.

Right now the Cashmere Scarf stands in my closet, hidden, safe and ready for its calling.

Pray it fulfills its destiny.

Ibhog, May 1, 2012


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Bombs

Memories and bombs share numerous features. Your life in certain emotional realms resembles a minefield; they’re times when you have to exercise extra care while you’re spending your moments. It’s a very dangerous journey.

Memories hide in scents, pictures and sounds. You unexpectedly land on one lodged in some devious corner, and boom: it explodes, and you’re strewn in pieces. You become a blur, a cloud of dust.

Funny thing is you realize you didn’t really forget anything. You’d think you got over things, but the fact is, you never did. You take the blow – steady, breathless, your lips pursed in pain, holding back struggling screams. Something is turned off in you, and it’ll last for days, until the ruptures furl unto themselves again.

And you walk again down your memories one night, and boom.

Another memory.

With years, you’ll be surprised; because of all the off notes on that rhyme of agony, a smile in epilogue is the least expected, but oh well, it does come eventually.

Satisfaction seeps in that way…

Alhamdulilah



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Coaster Promise

A colorful helium balloon was watching from above. It was around eight at night when he felt the child in her wanted it. She held it along their stroll in the big mall until they settled for dinner.

They sat and ordered and while waiting for their appetizers she grabbed the coaster, flipped it and with a pen gave it to him saying: write for me something to remember you with.

The hangout was by the wake of one of those intermittent break-ups tearing the white sheet of a relationship. Weaving it either by denial or maybe utter idiocy, he decided he would make yet another promise bigger than the sky.

He stares at the blue sky now wondering how vast it is, but not remembering the words he scribbled on that coaster. Never, love, eternity were ones that rang bells he hated to hear though.

A couple of feet away, a booth was occupying some corner, and in that corner it carried two young families, of either the Mom was too busy with her anecdote that her little daughter, a 7 year old at most, was out in her own little left field, imprisoned behind one of the cutest pouts they ever saw.

“She keeps glancing at your balloon,” he said, curious.

“I don’t care,” she snorted playfully.

He smiled.

“Give it to her.”

“No!”

He beckoned to the little rebel and over she came under two wings of anticipation.

He watched as she surrendered her gift for the sake of a kid’s smile, and as he did, he tried very hardly to discern the mother in her... in vain... in hindsight.

They ate, talked and then left.

And because it’s like man to carve his life lessons in fate by the sharp strokes of his mistakes, he sits now alone, numb from the pain, muttering:

After all, it doesn’t mean happiness that two meet halfway if they both had taken a wrong turn in the first place.



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On Fiction and Women

The ride to work today was a journey through wet Cairo, a two hours trip through mud and water. I was trying to bind myself to the sky, and forget my concerns about work to Howard Shore’s music in the background.

A couple of days ago, I saw a quote in someone’s email signature. It went like this: “If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.” I’ve got to admit, the quote made me pause longer than many others and that’s because it gave birth to a novel feeling I don’t think I knew before.

Have you ever felt that if you try to question something more you understand it less? Just like those digitized photos where if you get near all you see is blurry squares, while if you go farther the picture prevails?

So that’s how I comprehended the wisdom of this quote. It hit something. I don’t know what it is, and the moment I tried to know, I felt that I lost it. So I stopped and I kept repeating the quote inside my head, maybe just enjoying its rhyme although I rarely witness rhyme that holds so much mystery and meaning.

So while I was sprawled out in the backseat of my Taxi this morning, listening to the rippling sound of water under vehicle tires, intertwining with the clarinets in Shore’s masterpiece, it dawned upon me that fiction is just like that: it’s something beyond full comprehension and if you chase it, it will phase you out.

Fiction comes to you according to its own volition. Fiction is too adamant in a hunt. A figment of your imagination is truly just that: a figment. A very generous, thin and cottony picture that either gets captured in the right moment, or is lost forever. It’s subtle and brief. It’s simple and unusually powerful. It has that magical ability to extend some feeling you never knew you needed so bad. It dissolves your stress in one second, and it adds to your comfort by stretching that second. Fiction invented what’s called a long pause. Fiction is your reality in a different dimension.

And that is, dear reader, what hit me. Fiction is very real. Fiction is as real as your own existence. These thoughts and pictures that get donated to your soul throughout your day are just a mere reflection of your reality.

Everyone has different kinds of imagination, and that’s just more proof that imagination is real. And just as you can’t change the way your face looks, you will never be able to harness the boundaries of your imagination. Fiction defines you, you don’t define it.

It’s like a radio that’s always on. You don’t really switch it off. You may stop listening because you’re distracted with work or life, but once your mind is clear, and if silence is in your company you will listen to your imagination whether you wish to or not. You don’t dismiss a thought. It’s way more powerful than you think. An idea can change the course of an entire nation. A beautiful figment of imagination can touch the lives of millions of people, forever.

A fictitious character can relentlessly talk to you for years. And you would listen, even if you’re not really aware that you are.

However, and I have tried this, and it sounds crazy: if you try to talk to your imagination, to respond to it, it will reform, it will bloom in ways you only thought were the stuff of heavens.


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Lie in the backseat of a car beside a bare armed beauty queen on a rainy night and pass by the yellow lanterns on the road, slowly. And watch how the droplets slide by the windshield and cast the yellow reflection on her skin. The water will pour along outside, and on her skin yellow shadows will dance.

She might be very still. But her stillness could never behold more playfulness.

Blink.

And you’re back alone in the car. Back to a way less real reality than the one you paused for some minutes in by her bare arms.

A figment extends your existence. It gives perspective. It grants you space and calm. It deludes you into control, but in a good way.

Fiction literally gives you more years to live. It adds to your age...

Give in to it. Live it. Do not hold it back, or shut it away. Never try to provoke its boundaries. Go along with its subtle simplicity, don’t ask much of it when it yields, and don’t ignore it when it’s present.

And always thank God for the mystery that’s your soul.



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Meeting

Tonight was the first we speak in thirteen months. I have many strange resemblances of feelings. His emergence was nothing climactic in the sense of the word. It was so simple and so matter of fact. There were no gasps of any sorts; it didn’t even amount to a surprise. I wasn’t really anxious, or curious. He wasn’t either, it seemed. I was taking a walk around sunset in our neighborhood; my Saturday had some new suffocating traits to it this weekend, and I figured I’d go out and smell some October air.

My hands were in my dress’s pockets and my eyes were always a foot ahead of my toes. I was sulking in thoughts of the sky, even though I was watching the seam cutting through the blacktop on the road, and kept imagining very tiny people living in those miniature canyons, looking up at the blue heavens. It struck me how the sky to those were to be just the size it is to us, and then felt so small, yet refreshed. When I’m sad, the sky hugs it away; or the sea; or, well, my poor pillow.

I kept munching at the road with my slow gait, the breeze blowing away the soil in my chest. The road had slowly danced to the left towards my house when I saw him by the corner of its appearing image. He was wearing a white shirt. I don’t ever remember him wearing a white top of any sort. It looked peculiar with his beard. He had his back to the wall that shouldered my gate, and he also had his hands in his pockets.

He, too, was thinking of the sky.

I knew him enough to tell, after all those months.

To me, his presence there was a dot to a sentence that got excusably long. My pace wasn’t affected the least bit, and I watched my heart. It’s like it didn’t feel him. My air shifted in bits very similar to the way it would had I seen a stranger; or maybe someone who’s too familiar. I think it was a blend of both impressions.

Of subterfuge there was none, and of awkwardness there was none. I reached him and our eyes talked for the complete amount of fifteen minutes. They’d always had a language of their own. It had to it the comforting notion of delegating conversation to two others who can speak for us. His eyes were the same ocean like brown; the reddening sun cast a new hue on them though. His hair was different, it showed at parts the skin beneath it, but by his crown a shock of black balanced the look of his statue. He was thinner, weaker. His chest looked firmer and his beard was neglected. The wind teased a tendril of his hair. His lips were dry and half opened in wordlessness. When the silent conversation ended, his eyes moved to the side quickly and towed his head after them.

Ibhog almost always gave me the impression that there was a waterfall by the horizon of that specific look. I’m often very close to give in to the fantasy. No one I met, and I believe would ever meet, would have such deepness of looks. Ever. It’s so gravitationally yawning; it tugs you in. And I don’t know, but I think I always hear something inside the hug of that stare. It’s always the numbing fall of water. Not only this, but its old skill at connecting to my hands and inviting them to his chin worked as perfectly as ever. I had to trap their whims in the prison of my now very hot pockets.

I’m a very delicate girl. I can feel pins pricking the mattress. I get cut through like white clouds get by the icy tops of mountains. But one thing I’m sure of: those fifteen minutes were exquisitely pain-free. They were wrapped in a cottony metaphor, and they stretched in a harmless pause. In a


147

fleeting gush of hope: I wished we were forever frozen this way; in a portrait, or in a warm nook of time.

I missed this feeling the most. I think that’s why my thoughts were rather stable. It was like meeting something your body really misses; like water, or a nice smell. For a short while, you forget about consequences until your body gets its full dose; those … savoring moments; when cold water drenches the inside of your chest after a hot day in traffic. I was savoring him, yes, this is how I felt, I guess.

I was imbibing from his presence what wouldn’t have made me stumble for the past three-hundred and ninety-seven days, eighteen hours, and four minutes.

The sun sat. We both blinked and I wordlessly opened the gate and went upstairs, followed by the sound of his steps in their own eternity.

“How’re you doing?” was his first music.

“I’m good”, I think I responded.

“So, how’ve you been, Noha?” he asked.

I didn’t reply. I just glanced at him on our way to living. In the middle of our attempt at conversation he started talking about his trip. I wasn’t listening to him; I was rather listening to his voice.



148

The House, The Car

Hey you guys,

I have like a lot to write about! Yesterday night some rare type of elation visited me and I much wished I could sit down and write, but I was too tired. I dropped asleep in bed before midnight for the first time in very long months. I woke up today aching from the long hours I slept, had breakfast with the family, showered, went to prayers and returned home to Surat Al-Kahf, then the rest of my current read.

Yes. I’m so proud of myself. I can’t remember the last time I finished a book, being the avid bookworm that I was. But this one, I did. I borrowed it from a dear colleague at work; an Arabic book: ;!�� ;.��Z by Mohamed Kamel Hussein. Wait, let me show you a quote:

“ �لJء !��.3ن < وا��0� أ�� !=, ذ�� . ا�*] �.�8X ,�- 5 �(, ا��L \وأره �. �� 5 !�@(, أو �*=.; أو �T! W@0[0, ان �, �� وأ�4ع, ا�8*3ل ا�5 وا��ب, @�� أ�N ا�.�أة W0$ ا�*] �.5 إن�]_ 5�� ,� [* ,W�4و< وأ�� ,� \`Xا� ,.- ��`N - �� ,W�وأ� [*� �!�J

�ل '�(*Gر. وه3اه� إراد �� _(� آ�ن إذا �58Jء �, ا��5 ��!�� L�a)�' &' ��0, ا�*] �.�8X ,�- 5 �(, ا�� XQ- ,�- .”

The book wasn’t even about women, rather about the nook of time that witnessed the people’s crime against Jesus, and some of the stories surrounding that main plot. It had a touch of history, philosophy and religion. It was a good mix, I would recommend it as a light read.

Well, where was I? I’m more sad than happy about my writing these days. I removed many of my posts last week after I came to the realization that they were, well, just not right. I open a good book and watch how the author dances with his talent and word craft, and I feel bad about myself. I used to feel this, I think. I used to think I could write, I mope.

This blog might undergo a transition in the very near future, just like it did two or three times during its eventful history. I sometimes think I ran out of stories, that my life has upon itself now the imprint of ceaseless constancy and unrelenting repetition. However, life is never that dull. Not to a writer, it’s not. I just need to lighten up, breathe it in, and exhale it out in my own wording.

Let me talk about inspiration. There’s this time of the day that starts a couple of hours before noon and that extends sometime after it, at work, especially at work, when something strange happens. I suddenly get inspired! My want for writing the words onto some spotless sheet of friendly ears becomes incomprehensible. I lose focus and my hate for work just strengthens. I go the rest room, wash my face and keep looking at the mirror but not to see myself, because I’m quite sure my mind is usually elsewhere, occupied with hundreds of story lines, of scenes, of metaphors and allegories, of fantasies and word magic, of sky high happiness and of laugh loud comfort.

I blink. It goes away, leaving me warm in the chest and the neck in the oddest of ways. I believe inspiration is related to our brains. This muse, or this flow of it, has this imperceptible physical feature that numbs you to warmth. And suddenly I remember our Prophet, peace be upon him, and how he used to sweat so hard when he received revelation. Can this be attributed to that? Isn’t revelation a much stronger kind of inspiration, because who inspires you then isn’t your thoughts, but rather God Himself? Didn’t the Prophet tell us in the Hadith that a vision coming true is one of the forty-something parts that constitute the whole of prophethood? Maybe.


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The warmth, as in actual heat hugging the back of your neck and the insides of your chest, doesn’t lie. Not to me, anyway. This is my favorite time of the day, and each time the spiritual yoga starts, I wail inside at the unfortunate setting of it – my office.

You would think I’m a past kind of person. I shan’t fool thou, for I am well acquainted with my past, too well I’m afraid. However, besides the animate self-lashing the pillows witness every night, I also take heed of my looking ahead. I’m rather a future person, I impatiently wait for the future. I sometimes wish I could blink and skip my twenties and be at the crown of my time, with whoever it was willed upon me to live it. I also tend to be free of subjects, and be full of prospects. I love the idea of things and people. I wrote about this before, and it was clear in my posts about the Cashmere Scarf I bought as a gift for someone I don’t even know. I like the idea of happiness, more than I do that of happy people. It’s strange, but that’s who I am. I would make you happy for happiness’s sake, more than yours.

So as a step towards that quest of living with myself, and as a passing I do by what would now be the remains of my desperate hunt for the happy of angels, I’m actually thinking about moving out and starting my own home, alone.

Before my previous trip a month ago exactly, I had a huge bereaving fight with my father. It’s often a pernicious hour the one when one’s way of things collide with that of the ones who bore them. I say it like before, parents shall forever be a mystery to me, and the unfathomable that’s the conspiracy of this universe with them against us, shall forever be itself. I cried and I wept, approaching the 25th year of young life that I am, I did. I can’t exactly do that and feel okay about it, you know? We couldn’t meet halfway.

It was me trying to seek his approval after two weeks of boycott. I was flying out of the country the very next day, and I couldn’t bear the idea of doing that while carrying this load of guilt. The discussion was a similar version to its sister two years ago, except that this time I was more mature, and he the same. I told him point blank that, no hard feelings intended whatsoever, I can’t live in the house anymore. It’s always stressful, and it always nudges whatever morsels of peace I collect through my days and scatters them into abysses of despair, anger and frustration. I mean, maybe us grown-ups should really not live with their parents? I don’t know, but I’m starting to believe it’s true.

This is exactly what happened this afternoon post finishing my book: it only took me a stroll to the living room for my infant of peace to be hacked into absolute misery. My muscles hurt, my colon rebelled and my mind halted. I ran back to my room and huddled under my quilt, withering under very cold conditioned air, not being able to stand still. What has become of me? I can’t even rest in my own home? My own house? Among my own family? What kind of test is this? I cry inside, so damn hard.

Dad didn’t understand. He told me that he doesn’t want me to leave home, that he would never do that. I don’t want to do that as some kind of revenge, I don’t want to heal my frustration by hurting others. I just think I’ll be a better person in so many ways when I just have my own space, to freaking rest. He didn’t understand; it’s quite difficult, to be honest, to try to convince a middle eastern parent with this kind of logic. Moving out in our society isn’t considered a rite of passage, rather an act of mutiny.

Our conversation ended when I wept, at which moment I left the room and dived into my pillow, like a broken hearted woman. The next hour my sister came to the room and told me that dad wants you to come sit with us before you sleep – my plane was early in the morning. So I go


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out. He hugs me. And just as every quarrel in Egyptian homes end, this one ended half-finished, the exact amount of unresolved issues are left to denial, just so another catastrophe feeds on these remains and wake up again one day.

Today in the dim lit room of me, every feeling was hanging in the air, it was so crisp all of it. It is one of those times when you just feel everything. I keep telling myself that something must change, I can’t keep up with this anymore. I love my family, I would never hate any of them, and I dearly heart my father, you have no idea. This man is the most important man in my life. And one of the reasons I’m thinking of leaving is exactly that, I can’t put pressure on him again, let alone stress myself out.

When the annoyances are but a small rubble here and there that cause a strain only when hashed together in your chest, it’s usually impossible for you to reason with only the gravel of them.

Domestic stress is usually love tried with so many small challenges on very long periods of time, each small issue on its own would never break a home, but with time, they gain strength and build hoard, and at the end, a small tap on a buried wound causes a massive strike on the head of its structure, so that it ruptures into deaf resentment of everything.

I’m at that stage now. I convulse, actually convulse; my body vibrates and my breathing is vexed every weekend. You don’t want to see me on Sundays. I’m like a worker returning home from hard labor, I trudge through my weekend, unfinished thoughts, unhealed feelings, undone things, uncome wishes, unhappy ending. To top that off, I can’t talk about it with anyone. It’s absolutely lonesome.

So after the lengthy introduction that has the impression to not relate to the title of its post, I start to talk about the future, my only found love. What if I move out?

It’s quite normal in Egypt for a guy my age to be searching for someone to share their life with, which I’ve been doing on and off for years, in fact. I’m very on now, but I keep being hit with disappointments and let downs that I’m losing leverage. I keep waiting week after week for shes who don’t come, and for chances that rarely visit. I build expectations that rarely get met, and come across ones with ones I rarely meet.

I don’t like the idea of going to homes and proposing to ones I don’t know well, or worse, to ones I didn’t even meet. I’m not against the idea, however; I think for some this is the way things would work. For others though, it never works this way. It’s best described as on a case by case basis; not only won’t it work for certain people at all, but I even tend to think it won’t work for certain people, but only in certain attempts. I mean, imagine the possibilities with only one person, now what if they were two people? Anything can happen. I recollect Austen’s quote:

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

I also don’t like the other way around, which some call dating. It doesn’t feel right, not to mention its religious verdict. Also, approaching potential women isn’t an easy job, neither is giving deserved heed to ones approaching. It’s... complex... and it... just... it just aches. I don’t have it in me


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to talk about relationships in this post, I have many pieces hanging in my drafts section waiting to see the light of day. Marriage is seriously difficult in Egypt, and I don’t have many bright experiences with it.

Now back to my fantasy. What if I get myself the house and the car? I don’t own a car. I was always preoccupied with the ring and the bride. I’m afraid now that by the time the ring bearer comes to her home, I’d be too spent to give her the love she deserves. The energy I’m now spending on endless wait, is better off spent on things that would make me feel better, you know? I would be happy. I would like to nest! Some would think that nesting is associated to women, but they’d be wrong. Men need homes as much as women do; for them it’s comfort and for women it’s safety. It’s like two faces of the same coin, really.

One of the reasons that is making me second guess myself is the question of what if a she actually comes around and doesn’t like the home I built? The thing is, I do believe in one’s right at an attempt to build her kingdom, but I like to think that with my tendency to have her in mind with every step I take, and with her understanding of my predicament then, she’d compromise. I would change things she doesn’t like with whatever resources we have, we’ll make it. I would never prevent her from exercising that which makes her happy.

Also, I’m not the kind of person who slums it to save money. Me and money: we’re like a story. Money for me doesn’t have real value. I spend hilariously. It’s really unfortunate at times, alhamdulilah. Besides, I can’t save my comfort, it’s crippling. On the contrary, that house that I want to build, I wish to be perfect. I will not spare a penny on the account of my happiness, and also on hers. She’d be my compass. Oh that drawer is beautiful, she’d love it. And, and, that sofa is amazing. This room, this is what I want her to like. This velvet carpeting is perfect for living. Yeah... something like that.

My fantasy reached alarming levels when I started to think about incorporating the blog in the process, as a tracker for events and a placeholder to pictures; something on the line of documenting me egging out of a shell, but, well, let’s just say my sanity is still under control, alhamdulilah!

So yeah. Maybe I’d be that guy with everything except for the bride.

How sadly happy that would be.

Ibhog, June 29, 2012


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In nine years

It’s a really nice idea, to extend into the future that way, and picture yourself. I’m so dried up these days, I’m behind in my reading, and my writing stamina is stretched thin. I basically suck.

Okay, Ibhog. Breathe. Try to summon that muse of yours for all the silent fans, try to conjure faith in you. Forget about your irksome status quo these days, it won’t last. Your words will. Words last. They do. Breathe.

I remember one moment I lived in the past when something that I so long wished to happen had just happened, and when I looked ahead like I’m used to, I found nothing – just a murky gray plain, with too much fog. That which I wanted was then behind me, and I didn’t even enjoy it as much as I pictured I would, for even though a dream comes true, at times it’s only a mistake in hindsight. It’s ironic, how one’s whole idea of the future can one day be a mistake in the past.

I’m very careful now with following those traces of hope. Hope is very misleading. However, I’ll always be a fan of imagination, of wishful thinking and of fiction. There’s not much I can say here that this blog hasn’t already said.

In nine years, I’ll either be awfully alone, or I’ll be nesting with someone. I can’t decide which one of them is more likely to happen because right now the signs of both are equally strong. Let’s just say, though, that I think I’ll be happier if I was with someone – a wife, of course.

Of all the favorite scenes I can write about, chooses itself that one with the swing in the park. I think I tweeted about this before (twitter is eating my inspiration in slow motion these days). Some religious women have this secret fantasy where they’d go to a public park and play with swings; it’s a secret fantasy because, well, you know, with their reserved nature, it’s not fully okay to play in public that way, with their Hijab and their shy stances and so on.

I find this wildly attractive, to be honest. First of all, the fact that she’s religious enough to have this sort of rule is exactly what I want, and then the playful side that keeps imagining a go at the swing is exactly what I want also. So this, like, inner struggle, you know. A lass who wants to play and have fun, but at the same time, who respects her rules. This mix of reserve and fun is a beautiful balance. It’s the balance the Prophet’s wife herself had, peace be upon him.

So, yeah.

In nine years we’d be at this empty park, everyone left, and there’s a faint lantern by the swing. I don’t know what would be nicer: if we’d have a child with us, or if we’d just enjoy that moment all alone. She would be shyly regarding the thing, all eager and impatient, but at the same time, she can’t stop looking around for people who might be there to see.

I would be melting, honestly. I would tell her to give it a shot, and with the safety that I’d exude unto her feminine yearning self, she’d take my approval and fly towards the swing. She’d stop at it, give me one final smile, and slowly sit down. The metal chain squeaks with her weight, and moves two or three inches. She would be testing it – a touch of fear, to perfect the scene.

I would approach this climax of happiness, this picture of wish come true, this grown up child of a woman, and tell her to swing.

She’d shake her head no.


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I ask her why. She tells me that it’s ridiculous.

And just when she was about to get off, I push her. She stifles her excited scream but only halfway; both of us shush ourselves all at once and look around with silent giggles. I tell her to keep quiet 3ashan el fadaye7, and then I’d push her again, slowly. We’d have a romantic conversation of sorts, maybe about how crazy we are, or about the fact that I find her spectacularly beautiful this way, or maybe we’d remember a happy moment, or talk about funny things.

Some minutes would fly by before a park guy would emerge, in which moment I’d grab her and land her safely on the ground. He’d disappear again behind some trees, so that she’d snuggle under my arms.

“Thank you,” she would say, “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages.”. “I know,” I’d reply smiling.

And then we’d just go home, from this guilty endeavor.

To us.

Ibhog, May 19, 2012


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What Happened To You?

You were cheerful, hopeful and just full of life. You always had things to do, and people to meet and so much stuff to talk about. And then, with days, it’s like the closer you got to your dream, the more it haunted you. I know that having the same dream every day with it never coming true is the very definition of a nightmare. Or maybe your dream actually came true, but passed you by so deviously...

You’re sad, now. You rarely speak. You withered. It’s like you had hope that you lost, or like you needed someone who never lived up to your idea of them. It’s like you coined despair, and breathlessness.

Your words are too heavy. Your gestures are too designed. And your silence is deafening.

You’re not you anymore. And I don’t know what happened to you.

But anyway, I wish you’d be back to your smile one day.

Very soon.

Ibhog, July 2, 2012


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On humming and hardships

It happens in a rare fold of spontaneity that I’m not used to at all. I just pick a tone that’s a good song, an old Nasheed, and sometimes a verse from our Holy book and rhyme along. People give me weird, are-you-serious looks. Some of them hide their admiration, and others just listen to me in unsettled silence. I go to the office pantry to make myself green tea and sing. I walk from a building to another and recite a verse. Sometimes it happens with no wording, I just produce hums that are actually unprecedented. It is very peculiar and curious.

And then, I bask in a special kind of introspection. I adjust myself in myself, and actually see that I’m happy. I never did sing that often before.

Sometimes when you’re about to make big life decisions, your mind plays the conspiracy trick on you and tells you that every hardship you surmount is a sign that you should not go on. I’m well acquainted with let downs, but this time, and without me intending it, I get convinced with every bump on the road that it’s a sign that I must actually go on.

I’m falling in love with the end of the road. I feel like I’m heading towards a much bigger purpose than whatever it is that was tying me down. I’m rising above without spending myself in trying to will it. I look at the sky all the time. I crack with sadness, only to find happiness bursting at the seams.

I believe not anymore that this universe is conspiring against me. On the contrary, I kind of feel that every bad thing is conspiring against me just because of how amazing the endeavor I’m about to undertake is, because of how right it feels.

I have never felt this way before in my life. I’m actually learning about optimism and Tawakkol by day. Alhamdulilah…

Ibhog, January 03, 2013


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In the end

I love you, I truly do

I just don’t know who you are, yet

I even don’t know if we’ll meet

And if we meet, whether it’ll work or not

And if it works, whether it’ll last or not

If you’re tall ... or short

Beautiful ... or plain

Old ... or young

If your eyes are hazy ... or chocolaty

If you’ll love me ... or love me back

If I love you ... or love you back

If I’ll be your first

Or if you’ll be my ... *sigh* ... first

Anyway

I just thought you deserve to know

That I truly heart the idea

Of your existence.

And that where your feet stand

Prays my heart ... in all devoutness.

And where your eyes rest

Lights white

My whole wide world.

So...

I just thought you should know.


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Blog Shutdown

This is my last entry in the blog inshaAllah.

I have made three attempts at writing this post and they have all failed. I always get stuck when I try to explain why I’m making this bold decision. I didn’t realize the thing was that confusing, which actually adds to my reasons.

Let’s just say that what once was a light hobby has morphed with time into a heavy burden. A place where you shared a quick thought, a happy moment, or a sad situation, somehow became the reason behind them! That a thinking pattern that used to be refreshing turned into something inflictive. That sharing secrets left its healthy careful nature and became a pressing need. That somehow one’s awareness of things became anomalous – you think of half the things half the much they deserve, and get stuck in the other half of things double the much they do.

Your version of reality is maimed. Your miseries are always by the door of that publish button, which is the opposite of finding comfort. Reflection is suddenly dramatic pain. Contentment is suddenly the exception, not because of its rarity, but because of its nature! Things are magnified. Life’s normal course fades away before the manufactured version published online.

“Why did humans do that to their feelings? Whether it was anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put something else forward in its place. And then there were those who pretended their emotions were bigger and grander than anyone else’s. A little annoyance they acted out like a gigantic rage; where a smile or chuckle would do, they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was dishonest.” – Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance.

I don’t know if I’m making sense to you, but I think my addiction has reached alarming levels. I lost sight of that balance and, for me, some important things in life need more mental and emotional attention than blogging.

And I’m giving you this on a silver platter: find yourself before you blog, and don’t try the opposite. Go to the blogosphere when it needs you, not when you need it. Before you hit publish, recite to yourself ‘why hit it?’ instead of ‘why not hit it?’ Write to say something, not to say something, and don’t fall prey to the alleged innocence of subjectivity, because it’s faux. Don’t succumb to disguised relief, and listen to the whispers deep in you. Finally, beware of denial, it’s unusually cunning.

I will miss you all guys. I will even miss my writings. I skimmed through my archive last night and I was truly surprised at how beautiful some pieces were. I take pride in my journey, but I am also careful enough to observe a detour when it happens. I have made many mistakes last year and I have left myself somewhere along the way. I need to retrace my steps and pick myself up.

I’m changing these days. I don’t know if I’m getting back to my old self, or if I’m even becoming someone better than the two. I feel taking a break is the right thing to do. I might return one day, as a book author, or as a message sender, or simply as someone who has things figured out.

I’ll stop publishing posts, but I don’t think I’ll stop writing. However, if there was something I really wanted to share (like a book review, or a short story that deserves light), you shall find it on a facebook note (if that was still active), or, if I was lucky enough to have their permission, on one of my favorite bloggers’ spaces.


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I’m sorry for everything that might have caused any of you the kind of grievances I failed to notice and that were barred by your politeness. I thank you for everything you have done to me, and I bid you all the farewell you deserve.

It was a great voyage my friends. Life is a bumpy road indeed. Pray that I find my happiness. Thank you all, and goodbye.



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“The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

Let them a journey new begin,

But I at last with weary feet

Will turn towards the lighted inn,

My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though I oft have passed them by,

A day will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien


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The Cashmere Scarf

Ibraheem Hamdi

Documents

The Cashmere Scarf · The Cashmere Scarf Ibraheem Hamdi 6 It’s Okay Dear Ibhog, I know you’re different. You’re a mess. From that window of you to that life you think you see,