special effects

I sit here with my laptop on my lap, an old film on tv and the sun about to set on another Ramadan day. I don't know what to say. There is so much I want to talk about, so much that is simmering inside of me, but I just can't release it. I'm afraid. I don't want it all to boil over one day, but I just don't know how to release it.

I want to tell you about how strange life is. I say that a lot, but I don't think you really grasp what I mean by it.

I want to ask why people do the things they do? What motivates someone to think so little of someone else's life? How could they not grasp the enormity of it? But they don't. Ever. Constantly.

Yet in the big scheme of things it doesn't matter. We only choose to be affected by others. We choose the way we react to what is around us. We choose how we change the world around us. Some of us have more recognisable impacts than others, but none have a smaller impact.

We all have big impacts in our own little ways. We never realise how easy it could be to shake someone's being by a simple gesture, a smile or even a glance. We are oblivious to it but we turn other people's lives upside down everyday.

We are constantly fluxing about, trying new things. Making new discoveries. Excitement comes and goes. We spiral about edging closer and closer, narrowing the circle until, if we're lucky, we reach our destination. The centre of the circle. I want to go there, but I don't know what it looks like. I will find out soon. I feel myself getting closer.

I'm in love!?

I came across this quote the other day, have a read and tell me what you think.

"We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?"
David Foster Wallace

It made me reflect back on something that's been with me for a long time now.

For a good number of years I've been hopelessly in love. A lot of people use the phrase lightly, but I really mean it. The kind of in love that makes you blind to everything else that goes on around you. For years I let the world pass me by without really participating.

As an adolescent I never got into trouble, never caused my parents pain, never got into teen relationships. Not because I'm risk averse or too scared. I was too busy being deeply in love.

As a young adult, and even till now in my late 20s I am still yet to experience the real world. Sure I've traveled and seen a lot but I've never really experienced any of it. Things have happened, and I can tell you stories of events in my life that you would not believe. I defy any human being on earth to have gone through half of what I've gone through, but it was all external. I never really experienced those events. They were merely stories that happened around me and I happened to be the central character in them. I went through them almost with a narrator in my head, reminding me that none of it was real.

I've never done anything irresponsible in my life either. Never spent too much money, never drove dangerously (well mostly anyway) and I certainly never tried to impress anyone. I was too busy being in love.

Sure I've wasted plenty of time over the years, but eventually, it didn't matter. It was time spent daydreaming, contemplating. It was time spent being in love.

The only problem is, I don't know who it is that I'm in love with. I always thought it was my future life partner. The one I hadn't met yet, but would someday meet and recognise instantly. I always, thought that to be involved with anyone else would be a kind of cheating on the one true love, the one I'd share the rest of my life with. My heart was never tempted.

Lately though, I'm starting to change my mind about that. Maybe it's not a human being that I'm in love with at all. Not Mr right. Maybe I'll never fall in love with Mr right. Maybe I'm already too in love with a much more deserving someone. Maybe I'm in love with the one, we're all supposed to be in love with. Maybe that is why my heart has no more room in it for another human being.

God is too great.

So where to from here? Where do I go from here?

Purity

I try as much as I try, to keep my heart pure
but it's harder than you imagine
to keep the darkness at bay
for it has already been corrupted, infiltrated
the darkness that surrounds my external, my world
thoughts knock on my mind's door
they try to enter any way they can
sometimes they seep in, more than I like
I can't keep them out
thoughts darker than even
the devil can imagine
I am not an angel
I am not pure of thought
I try hard as I can
because I am merely human
I need all the help, that You will give me
all the forgiveness that You will bestow upon me
and then I need some more.
I lack the strength to keep these thoughts at bay
please let me have the strength
to keep them out of my heart
for I only have one heart
for I am only human
walking blindly in darkness
I ask not for revenge
I ask only for happiness
I ask not for a sacrifice
I ask only for purity
I am selfish that way
let those who have transgressed on my heart
feel no guilt nor pay my dues
let me only know You, enough
to expunge the darkness from my heart
let me make room for the light.

Endings

They say that all good things must come to an end. That is in fact true, but is missing a huge piece of information. You see all bad things also come to an end, so do all mediocre things and so on. Everything eventually ends. That is really a blessing that we often mistake for a curse. Can you imagine if your childhood never ended? or your exams, or dental visit, or... ugh, I shudder at the thought.

No I'm eternally grateful that my life is really composed of a series of endings. It is the endings that I will remember, not the beginnings and certainly not the middles. It is at the end that we gain understanding and, more often than not, regret the beginning. I can't tell you how many memories I have where I cherish the ending but try to forget the beginning. I'm looking forward, with great anticipation, to the ultimate end... the time when my greatest understanding will occur. I only hope that my hindsight then will not be too hurtful. That my regrets won't be as big as my learnings and that there will be at least one memory where I cherish the beginning as much as the ending. That memory is yet to come.


Eventually, once we learn enough, our endings and our beginnings become memorable. Like nature has learnt to set the sun just as majestically as it raises it... no matter where you are.

Travel – Part II

Travelling is an obsession for some people. It’s an addiction, a need to see what’s on the other side, be anywhere except home. I have that illness, I need the distraction. The more stamps on my passport, the more I want. I’m still a novice traveller, but I’ve already learnt a few things.

I learnt that people always behave the same, no matter where you are. I learnt that a common language is not essential for meaningful communication. I learnt that sunsets look just as beautiful no matter who you are. I learnt that souls recognise each other, that bravery is needed for the world to go round and that we are all thinking the same things.

Maybe I could have learnt the same things if I’d stayed at home, but seeing is believing, and you’ve never really travelled till you’re alone in a place you don’t speak the language. It’s the perfect escape, complete anonymity. It’s priceless and it’s fleeting, because very quickly people will get to know you and you loose your hard earned anonymity. Then the choices come back, more confusing and more overwhelming than ever before.

abstraction

I must be one of the most ungrateful people in the world. I keep being saved from myself and I never realise it until it’s all over. By then of course there is inevitably some other obsession, something else to dream about and wonder. Yet deep down I know none of this will matter in the end. There are other things hidden away even from my own dreams.

Let me ask you something: Do you ever wonder what’s in the future? Of course you do, silly question. Everybody does. But do you wonder with hope and expectation or do you dread what the future will bring? Are you afraid of it?

I often imagine that I’m watching my own life from outside. If I weren’t in it, feeling it, what would I think? Would my choices be any different?

Eventually we will all look at our worlds from outside. Our past is already unreachable. Yet it makes us what we are. If I knew what was to come. If my decisions were always informed, I wouldn’t have any of the experiences. I’d miss out on the learning.

I thought about that as I walked away, knowing this would be the last time. I hadn’t said everything. I didn’t explain and I doubt I was understood. But I walked away. Another chapter had ended. It didn’t have to end this way, but this was one thing not in my hands. No amount of explaining would have been enough. People can cross paths but experience the same things very differently. Sometimes we are at different places in our lives and can never see other than inside ourselves. Eventually, some of us can look back on distant memories and see what had been invisible. I wonder what will appear for me. Yet I’ll always be fond of this memory and I’ll always be thankful that I got away. I had escaped with my life.

The next chapter has already started. There is always overlap. I walked away wondering what will the future bring. I wondered with curiosity, as if I’m not in it at all, for I know I’m only briefly visiting.

Gateaux

Our fridge is full of this stuff. It's one of those things I associate with Egypt, because Egyptians seem to love it. Or at least I always thought they loved it. Personally I can't stand it. It's a dessert that I can't find one single redeeming quality for. It doesn't look good, is extremely fattening, makes the consumer nauseous and on top of that tastes really bad. Yet every single visitor we've had so far, without exception has not failed to produce a box of the stuff. One uncle brought the identical box twice!

The real irony is that the visitors, the same ones who bring the stuff, refuse to eat it themselves.

There must be a reason for this absurdity.

So, with my limited research opportunities here on my dial up connection I did what every self respecting researcher would do. I looked it up in the dictionary. It said:
noun ( pl. -teaux pronunc. same or |-ˈtōz|) a rich cake, typically one containing layers of cream or fruit. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from French gâteau ‘cake.’

Makes sense, it does seem like one of those overindulgent atrocities Egyptians are so good at copying from the French, like the furniture. I doubt the French themselves are as obsessed with it as the Egyptians. And why do Egyptians call it gateaux in the first place? It seems to be a theme. They love anything that comes from abroad, no matter how ridiculous it is, and they have to call it foreign names that most people don't even understand.

A pair of slippers are apparently called "sabeau"... or something I can't spell. What exactly is wrong with shibshib? isn't that a perfectly meaningful word? Menus say hot chocolate written in Arabic script... and here I always thought the original word for the drink made from coco beans was cacao.

Why swap the original for a fake? Why are we so proud of anything that comes from outside and treat this place so badly. Why replace the farmers' fresh produce markets with French chains of supermarkets and then smoke in them? Why is it people here think it's acceptable to open a can of drink and without a thought just drop the lid on the ground where they stand?
Doesn't that sort of behaviour hurt them? It hurts me.

Just once I'd like to meet someone who appreciates this country for what it is and respect it. Someone who calls things what they are, in the language they are speaking in... and just once I'd like a visitor to bring some nice Egyptian desserts instead of fake French cakes that I didn't even want to try in France.