Vain

''Of all pains,
the greatest pain,
is to love,
and to love in vain."

--George Granvill

I understand... and I am sorry

the desert

A desert, and for us, urban dwellers, the desert is deceptive; at first sight, the desert looks empty. It is vast, infinite and empty, but if you stand still and look carefully signs of life will often begin to emerge.

On Doubt...

we all face doubt sometimes... and now I am like a wooden rod of bamboo. No sooner have you had it bent than it strikes back straight again... the problem lies not in me minding these gymnastics, but is in the people whom my strike hits...

I once heard this...

"what you feel only matters to you, it is what you do to the people you love that counts"

----

-

incomplete

Great joy or great sorrow makes the world diminish... for eternal wisdom created nothing in vain... why is ...

Maktoob

His lightness strike my surface like the glittering sun strikes the surface of the salty lakes that surround the oasis. My soul glittered with a thousand stars, and on my surface the reflection of the raw human nature sparkled as the weathered rocks are reacreated inside the lake's glassy waters....with likeness, the conical hills are recreated... for now I can see how in this rawness he is my likeness.

A word spoken by nature, and it is nature that dwells inside his soul...

"يا فطرة سمحة و نفوس رقيقة

انا لما جيت اخدم الطريقة

شيخنا الي عارف سر الحقيقة

بسط يمينه و قال يا مريدي

عينك في عيني و ايدك في ايدي

كل الخلايق اخوات شقيقة

احلف بنون و المؤمنون

قلب الليلة دي اخضر حنون"

فريد الدين العطار (1142 - 1220 ) من ديوان جوهر الذات

-

Sweet little one...forgive me.... for your heart will wear within me untill I bid it farawell.

-

O great God. have mercy on my soul and his...

home

Our homes are our bases. we cry, fight, love and lose but at the end of the day, we come back to the familiar smell, sound and view and regain our faith. our homes stand still, and so everything else might as well. as long as we keep our homes, we might also be able to keep everything else put together. our homes are the base that retains our sense our orientation. but to see things clearly, every once in a while, I need to leave.

the couple of days away were beneficial. Being physically away stops that sedative effect of familiar places. my troubled mind was now no longer numb. As I was coming back home, everything suddenly came to focus. the clutter that was in my head at last sounded more organized and I could see patterns. My mind was clear and slowly but steadily reality started to unfold. it wasnot pleasant, but not a trauma either. my reality check result was negative.

Thus, there couldnt be a better timing to leave. the new flat is nice and different. Sometimes just being different is better. Hopefully I'll be moving by the end of the month.

for a new change.

so mizzzunderstood baby...so misunderstood

in the spring of 2001, hearings began in front of an Israeli state appointed inquiry into the deaths of 13 unarmed palestinians - 12 israeli arabs and one Gazan - killed during a a brief outbtreak of protests inside israel that coincided with begining of the Intifada. The inquiry came to be known as the Or Commision. The event was unique. Justice Theodor Or quistinoned ploice commanders and senior politicians. It was the first time when a senior judge come in a position to examine authoritatively and in public the relations between the Israel's jewish majority and its Arab minority.

yet, there was a glass wall. not a metaphoric glass wall, but a real phyiscal glass wall that only within weeks was built between the public gallery, where the palestinian families sat, and the rest of teh courtroom. The glass wall lasted for the rest of the inquiry with the juries, judges, and state witnesses found on one side and the families of the victims on the other. In photographs and on TV, the glass wall, however, didnt seem to exist. It was as if everyone was sitting in one courtroom waiting for justice to prevail.

Israeli's famous wall, or using the israeli version of the name, "security fence", is another example of Israel fondness of partitions. The wall is also called "anti-terror fence" or more neutrally, called barrier. it is a series of interconnecting walls/fences made of concrete, steel and razor wire, but this is only how it appeared to observers from the palestinian side. from the Israeli side, however, the wall is almost invisible, and what is looks like instead is a landscape embankment, planted with bushes and cactuses. In other sections of the wall there were paintings reimagining the view that was now missing.

Like the Israeli Or Commision glass wall or the "security fence", we construct our own walls. Our walls, however, are made to resemble more the glass Or Commision wall. we carefully design them while making sure they never seem to exist. yet unlike the Or Commision glass walls, and more like the scurity fence, our own walls are not only designed to silence us, but also serve to intimidate the rest of the people. Our walls are effective, coz they mask the nature of their seperation. for people on the other side, we look perfectly clear. However our glass walls are a deception, they prevent everyone on the other side from comprehending what they see.

behind our walls we seek security. Thats why we may prefer to call it a security fence. Our walls prevent our truths from getting through. through out glass walls we decieve the world into believing, ironically, not always what we want them to believe, but what we think will keep us safe. safe from pain of rejection. Safe from of being laughed at. Safe from our self consiousnesses. Safe of bieng anything else but all macho and strong. It is the distoring lens through which we aim to project ourselves. without our glass walls, we feel naked.

we are afraid of bieng misunderstood, yet also at times afraid of bieng understood. we are afraid of getting our truths and feelings through. We speak too much, but rarely mean what we say, or feel what we mean. we talk and talk and talk but usually unable to lay our cards on the table. we go back and forth between trying to make ourselves understood or at times misunderstood.

so this is in tribute of all my friends. For those I willingly destroy my glass walls for. For those who see me for what I am. For those I need not hide behind walls. for those who donot need to analyse to understand me. for those who have accurate insight for my mind and heart. For you are with me in the same courtroom and what the camera caughts is what we actually feel. In tribute of no hidden agendas.

feeling any better?

when he kept babbling about how he gets tested for Aids twice every year, I rolled my eyes and let out a stream of bored air. his hands moved around him in his typical girly fashion, made a skeptical face and said "but they keep on asking, why you want to get tested". he leans over, mimicing a judgemental look and says, " They ask, are you sexually active?". his voice gets higher in pitch as he continues "what da hell is their business if am sexually active!". at this point, I drop my head to the desk and roll my head so am not facing him. his voice acquires a worried tone as he says, "and I always have to lie and say I am travelling to south Africa"

For me, he was a childish pompous charachter. it was unbeilevable how he is showing up with the fact that he might be HIV positive! a pretenious girl, thats the exact signal he sends all over the room as soon as he opens his mouth, or moves, or walks or even sit down. he wasnt my "favourite" kind of person, to say the least. at the first couple of classes, a girl whispered to me that we have a gay on class. She mentioned his name, but I couldnt get the link at first.

I was late for class on wednesay. I opened the door quietly and tried to sneak in. I pointed to the nearest chair, which had a bag on it, and synched my lips in a "is this seat taken?" fashion. he looked at me and gave me a high five! I made my best to make a really annoyed face and said "is that you bag?". He shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to his bag. I took the next nearest chair, and ended right next to him. he passed on the attendans sheet and kebt his eyes fixed on my hands as i ticked next to my name. I bent over my bag to get myself a pack of mentos out and felt him glancing side ways at me. I turned to face him and said "mentos!".

It was his group presentation day about an NGO that defends human rights with special focus on homosexuals. they showed an interview with the NGO official, screened a part of yacoubian building, then showed students reactions when asked how they feel about NGOs protecting gay rights. and exactly after the guy who appeared to be having a one-word-dictionary with only the word "disgusting", came a black screen, then in white words I read "interview with an anonymous homosexual", his voice then came out of the speakers.

he was now setting by the front table. His forhead on the tablecloth and eyes fixed on the floor. the rest of the class, utterly transfixed, had their eyes fixed on him. All had obviously recongized his voice. my eyes croosed over scanning their faces. the first was giving him a nasty look, the second looked at me and gave me a bent smile and shrugged her shoulders. I saw confused eyes, shocked eyes, and laughing eyes. the professor, however, maintained an exceptionally neutral face.

after class, I was standing in the hall explaining to a girl how my history professor lost my paper. the girl was saying that i should do something he came over, casually touched my hands that are moving in enthusiasm in front of my face, and said"yes salma, you should do something". I turned to him, and he said" you can write a petition". The thought came flashing across my mind, "is he gauging my reaction?".

on my way home I saw him walking down the street. he had his ray-bans off and his eyes were more human. his typical fake air was gone. my eyes followed him as he walks, his massenger bag dangling by his side.

juggling my two majors!

DataBase quiz on sunday. Math303 + History midterms on monday. assembly program due tuesday, and Math200 midterm on wednesday.
screwed up the DataBase project that was due last thursday and the political science quiz that was on wednesday.

Cannot help but recall Kaiser William II quote from his infamous daily telegraph affair, "You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares!"

in this context, English, aka not specifically English..:)

striving

The water is much deeper than I thought

on missing

yasmine,

looking through your photos bring me to tears

I miss you

yesterdays

"My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder." — Sir William Golding

lost

Today, she died.

Its sad, shoking and confusing.

It happened fast, but these few minutes struggling for a breath, gasping for air and shaking from rapid, irregular heart beats are now deeply engraved, along with other similar unpleasant memories, in a dark place in my head.

I hope that for her, these moments didnt feel as bad as they looked.

what may seem as the moment of release, and when the shaking stops, a new chapter of missing begins.

The life and energy that used to exist, suddenly vanishes. and all your 5 senses start getting confused. the lost life familiar smell, shape and voice are starting to go and soon will completely dissapear leaving instead void.

u know that the body lieing infront of u now has turned to merely a material. a collection of unfunctioning muscles and blood vessels that will soon also be of no existance. but you still cannot avoid looking at it as if soon it'll start again talking, walking and moving around.

My mind still struggles with familirazing itself into the fact that what is lieing infornt of me now is merely an empty container and nothing anymore lives in it, and that although I can still allocate it, an allocation of whatever used to be there is not anymore possible.

Though she still exists, and unlike her body, wont vanish. she is now beyond reach or communication. she is now lost.

Both literally and metaphorically, having lost, leaves you also lost.

hmm??

"I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all." – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H."

!

"That woman is a woman!" Tilney, Shakspear in love

No Solution

"Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf, and nothing can bridge it...We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs." DAVID BEN-GURION, June 1919

mea culpa

mea culpa?
mea culpa!!!

in what I've done. in what I've failed to do

mea maxima culpa???!!

I'll be alright

looking at me now
I don't quite see it
but I'll be alright

If there is one thing you could change about Egypt, what would it be?

They asked my younger sister in Georgetown univ. undergrad. admission interview, "If there was one thing you could change about Egypt what would it be?" and in a firm decisive tone she said, "its people"!

I don't know whether to applaude her honesty, or like in the denmark issue dillema, condemn her unsensetive, could be even offending, freedom of speech. her words, little as they may seem, might not only upset the over 70 million subjects in our love it-then hate it-then love it...etc homeland, but will also dissapoint the fairly large anti-government fraction who would have been expecting an answer that is more coherent with thier non-hidden agendas. But let me here borrow what my father said in similar yet more aggressive situation, what my 17-years old sister bluntly said was "Kashef la monshe2", meaning it simply showed what was lieing there unnoticed in the corners of her mind. what she said was there, whether she said it or not.

But what would make a 17 years old girl think this way. She is tolerant, sets up her own charity projects which means she has a fair amount of social awarness. still gets nostalegetic for that tiny village in the Delta where we spent our early childhood. She is a soprano and sings opera yet she accepts and actually cherishes songs my brother listens to thats goes "el bango mish bta3y" and the like. she has always appreciated diversity. and although she confident, pretty and describes herself as a red-carpet-material, she is not vain or fake. She was the first ever to make me notice how the kind of culture that includes an enlarged channel sunglasses along with the prada shoe and the hand bag that worthes a three figure number one noticably find redundant around campus here at AUC, is an indicator of an ugly gap between social classes. she is a strong advocate for social equality. yet she says the thing she want to change about Egypt is its people!

To be saying this in favor of an elitest status quo is not even a possibility for yasmine and the higher social class are in fact so little to be called "the people". why then does yasmine want to change teh people?

Where have all the twittering gone?

They couldn’t destroy all the nests so they decided to cut off the trees. But because it would destroy the sight they decided to trim only the inner branches leaving the tree outer silhouette. Now the trees look more of a soup bowl than a normal tree. Only the outer branches surrounding a big void! It is almost sunset now and normally birds of different kinds would be going round and round and when the sun finally goes down I will start enjoying my daily enchanting dose of a mixture of warbles, trills, whistles and rattles even my cat will be enjoying his daily bird watching ritual. But there are no birds no more. The enchanting twittering and wheezing chirping and chirruping singing are gone. And here I am hearing only monotonous cockroaches and badly missing the good old days. After days of desperate attempts to spot birds from all the windows in the house, my cat now sits idly by me staring emptily at the monitor. I get visions of setting up a society for the protections of Egyptian birds and then the visions start turning disturbing when it shows that the only members are me and my cat! I imagine the two of us standing in Talaat harb square, me hanging a “save the birds” banner on my nick and my cat, disguised as a bird, playing dead by my side.

By leaving all the animal welfare issues aside, Apart from the pain we are causing other able-to-feel-creatures by destroying their habitat, and also apart from the pain they caused to the bird mother by forcibly chasing her off her nest and seeing her young being threw away, and by completely ignoring how is all this cruel and inhuman, from a purely conservation view point, it must be noticed that we are killing our wildlife, first dogs and cats, and now birds! I wonder if the plan is to empty the country out of its baladi breeds is to start exporting more prestigious foreign wildlife!

Several things must me mentioned here, in the UK, All birds, their nest and eggs are protected by the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981, and it is thus an offence to damage or destroy an active nest or prevent parent birds access to their nests. In case of birds such as the barn owl that are listed on Schedule 1 of the Act, it is an offence even to disturb the birds when at or near the nest.
And it continues to the US, Scotland, Portugal, Poland, Norway, Malawi and, No, not Egypt..!

everything descriped above is happening now in "Rehab City", new Cairo