Dear World

I look upon you
And see a frown
One that puts me down
For my sun does not rise
Except in your eyes
I look upon you
And wait for that smile
The one I'd walk miles for
I look at you
And keep waiting
Until it appears
Distinguishing every misery
Every drop of anger
Every single fear
Reassuring me
That you will forever
Be my world

A Transparent Mask

Where you have laid stones
I know there is a heart
Where you have locked up
I know I have a part
Where you pretend, where you lie
There is I

What you have mocked
I know is not real
What you have patronized
I know you actually feel
Where you pretend, where you lie
There is I

When you think again,
Think another time
What you gave away
Is no longer yours or mine
Find another
I have already said Goodbye

My Role...My Definition

Okay, so I'm not sure where this is going but a friend just said the funniest thing ever to me until I came to notice it was actually so true. She said she always feels like I am the phrase "al saket 3an el 7aq shaytan a5ras"...she continued by saying "3omrek ma bteb2i el sheetan".
That was all said with a laugh. And it was after I shared with her the story of how I reduced a person to tears giving them a reality check they needed. And no, I'm really NOT mean. I just do not believe in going along with people's bullshit when I think that...well...it's bullshit. I believe that support does not lie in patting a person on the back even when you know that what they're doing is absolutely WRONG! Especially when they know it's wrong and you know that they know it but are in denial! I do not believe that a friend must sit there, observe you turning your life, single-handedly into a living hell yet smile in the name of "support".
So here is my public declaration. If you are somebody I care about, I will never stay silent watching you wrong yourself. I will never believe in this naive misconception of what constitutes being supportive. I will tell you what I honestly think once and twice and if you really are determined to take the wrong path anyway, I will stay silent but never show any indication of approval (nor disapproval). I will continue to ignore your attempts of reeling me into applauding your wrong-doings. I will shut up and not give you advise, if you are not interested. But i REFUSE to be the kind of friend who, when everything falls apart, you turn to and blame for not guiding you when you needed guiding...for keeping the truth from you when you, subconsciously, know that you needed to hear it...for being that person who treats you with hypocrisy at the time you needed her to be frank the most. I refuse to be that kind of friend. I never was and never will be.

Journals of a Foreign Egyptian

This is one that I have written about a couple of years ago. I only posted it because I realized how ironic it is, in comparison to my last post. I suppose the transformation from 100% pessimist to umm..a billion % optimist is too obvious to require pointing out. 


Journals of a foreign Egyptian
Profile:
Born in Saudi (1991)
Lived in Saudi (until 2008)
Lived in Egypt (from 2008 up to current date)
So...am I an Egyptian who felt foreign in a foreign country or in her very own?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I never really liked our summer vacations to Egypt. They were boring, I knew no one and I ended up obligated to either hang out with my sisters and their friends, or at home. However, I still couldn't stay in Saudi Arabia for college. My last two years alone with my folks at home were the typical teenage years in which being in peace with Dad and Mom was actually a highlight of the week. But I loved Saudi. I loved it with all my heart.

When you live in a place like Saudi, it never occurs to you as you grow up that those priceless friends you make are only temporary. You enjoy the freedom (and yes, I did say freedom because Saudi is not the hell-hole everyone believes it to be), you enjoy the non-judgemental mentality, the fresh outlook on life. It never occurs to you that one day, very soon, you will have to leave and make new friends - in a place where friendship is defined in different terms.

This place is what I should call home. What I have to call home. Because no matter how much I loved the kingdom, I yearned for the day I would return to Egypt. Yet, the moment I arrived I could not tell where exactly it was I did not belong. My birth in an alien country never deferred the fact that I was a foreigner there. But my Egyptian passport didn't make me feel like I fit here either. I do not believe that the problem lies within my dissatisfaction because I would like to point out that I am not an unhappy person. I'm just a person who can't find home.

I stepped foot on this land optimistic with just the fact that this time my friends could be permanent. Could be lasting. Nevertheless, I was wrong once again. The friendships lasted shorter than I could imagined and for the strangest of reasons. Within the premises of my university, people were divided into groups of different sizes. Some were made up of 3 members and other of more. Some swore in the name of friendship and loyalty that they secretly stabbed every second within the day.

Others defined relationships in terms of what serves them and what doesn't. And then there were the friends who you practically lived with only to find out that they are only friends of company - friends that remained friends as long as you are continuously in their company. If, God Forbid, you are not in the mood of going out for a while, they simply seem to forget who you are.

And after seventeen years of friendship that were simply lost by departure from a country and two years of friendships that failed epicly one after the other for the most hilariously trivial of reasons, I came to the conclusion that when you live in a place like planet earth, it never occurs to you as you grow up that the friendships you make, like everything else that lives, simply die. Call me a pessimist but at one point or another, everything in life does. But that's alright. It doesn't hurt when you remember the good friends you had and the way life drifted you apart. Because you still recall them with a sincere smile on your face. It's the
other kind that hurts. The kind of friendships that ended due to betrayals, immaturity, replacement, ulterior motives, hypocrisy, abandonment and the worst of all...the friends that just never actually loved you back.

The Game

Let me start by warning you all that this post will not be one that is very fun to read. It is not positive nor inspiring. As a matter of fact, vibes of depression and frustration are emanating from it as I type each word. You should start feeling it in about a few lines.
So, I'm a few months away from graduating and suddenly I realize that my life is already changed. My friendships with those I have seen on campus every single day is growing apart while others completely ended. Life is just funny this way. Not. You know that game with all the chips building up a certain shape and you start playing by removing chip by chip without the whole structure crumbling down? Well, I feel like I am at that point in my life. I hadn't even noticed it that much until I started contemplating. Until I began remembering what life was for me a year ago, for instance. One by one, relationships I have made had ended. Friendships I poured alot of heart and soul into just grew apart until they became a phonecall a month (at best). It's a pity, isn't it? How at some point your life revolves around a certain people and then life happens and you find yourself living, without them. The sad thing is, you never really acknowledge it. It all happens gradually until one day, you think back and find that there's someone missing. Only he/she has been missing too long now for you to do anything about it.
However, I just had another epiphany. You know how in that game there are certain pieces you could remove WITHOUT tearing down the whole God damn thing? Well, I suppose if those people had been so important in my life, their absence would have made a huge gap that would have made me feel like my life couldn't survive without them. Only, here's the trick. In life, it is very rare that you find those kind of people. Relationships end in break-ups, marriages occasionally lead to divorces, friendships wither away when taken for granted and well, people die. Life, however, continues. You continue living. You make other friendships and other relationships and hope to God that he will not take away those pieces in your life that are too important to continue living without. Oh well, how about that? I guess there was an inspired part afterall. I'm sorry, I can't help the optimism. It has become a curse to me ever since I got it.

P.S If anyone remembers the name of that game, please share it. It really bothers me that I have to keep referring to it as "the game".

The Unusual Birth of Friendships

This is dedicated to a stranger who I decided is a friend over night. Here's to you, a person who I know that without speaking, will understand things that I have tried so hard to explain to everybody else but always failed. Here's to us, for the strength and courage it took to change our worlds around. I suppose the best statement that would apply to us is: Good riddance.

Have you ever read something and felt "I could swear this was written by me" only you know for sure it wasn't?! Do you know how close it could make you feel to that writer; knowing that these words were ones poured out of their heart, telling YOUR story? There's always something about that realization that somebody shared your suffering. Not joy, certainly; afterall, no sane or decent person would wish heartache upon anybody else. But there's this comforting feeling that you were not alone. That some other stranger out there was feeling all the things you felt at - possibly - the exact same moments. It makes you come to realize that no, you were not a freak of nature doing the abnormal. You were not the only one giving in to the desires of an unworthy person. You were not the only one questioning your sacrifices yet returning to make them over and over again. And you were not the only one who cried at night, wondering why you were inflicting so much pain upon yourself...but always assumed the alternative would be just as painful and perhaps even harder. I read your writings and saw me. I saw pain, vulnerability and a person who picked herself up off the ground and decided to choose the life she knew she wanted even when her mind and heart tricked her into the false sensation of wanting something else...someone else. I read your writings and found a friend who could relate; a person who I know that they now understand me even though we hardly ever talked. And I realized that I was not stupid. I was just human.

The Hovering

Television. I always perceived it as a method of entertainment. I always switched when the news came up. I never wanted to concern myself with wars. I preferred avoidance. I always chose not to see Palestenian lands look like the warzone it actually is. I chose the movies, the shows and all the programs that did not speak of injuries and death. Those were my choices until the 25th of January, 2011. I don't know why I began writing about this today even though the beginning of the revolution has long gone. Perhaps because a year has passed and our so-called glorious revolution has not yet ended. Who am I kidding? That's not it. I am writing today because even though words have sold me out for the past year when it came to the death toll in Egypt, they have decided to revisit me in order to unburden the rage inside my chest. Words have come back, today, after I have seen pictures of a barely-teenage-boy who was murdered in a football match. A FOOTBALL MATCH, for heaven's sake! The power of speech had returned when I began to ponder on how death is so close to each and everyone of us. Revolutionist or not. Death is in the air of Egypt. It floats above us every single day then crashes upon a few abruptly. I always thought fatal destinies could be avoided. People were being murdered in Tahrir square so some people stayed at home. When there was havoc in the streets, people remained in their living rooms, watching chaos take place through a T.V set...watching the world go down from far away, where they were safe and sound; when the truth is, no one is safe anymore. Revolutionists die and get injured every day. Girls are getting raped on their way to the mall. Football fans die in the stadium, where they were only headed to cheer. We are not safe. No body is. No one is immune to death, of that I am sure. But in Egypt, we are all extremely prone to it in every second of our living days. Blame the revolutionists all you want. Smirk at the stones they are thwarting at soldiers. But do not mock them. Do not laugh and call them imbeciles for throwing stones for revenge. Because until death hits somebody you love so dearly and for the most unjust of reasons, you will never understand. You will never feel the guilt of the father who will always wonder why he hadn't told his son to stay home that day. You will never begin to comprehend the heartache of a mother who watched her son leave with a laugh and come home in a coffin. You will never feel lost like the girl who lost her fiance`- the man she was going to make a family with and couldn't think of making one without. So, don't mock, don't laugh and don't belittle the rage with which they try to avenge the death of their loved ones. Because you will never begin to understand what death could do to a person until it hits home. And that, I never wish upon you.

Hello and Goodbye

I do not know where to begin..what words to start with. Let me first say, hello again. It's been a while since you have been out of my life and today is one of the many days in which I thank God for that. I look at what you have become or who you always were only I never realized...and I thank God. Over and over again. The thing is, I never wished you harm. I always wished you well. I wished you would find the strength to become sane, the confidence to become self-secure and the stability to remain true to yourself and those who you love. I wished you all the good things in the world and even though I had no regrets, I cried at the thought of leaving you behind. I cried at the thought of cutting you out of my life. Excuse my honesty but the tears were not due to the wonderful person you actually were but to the fact that it was difficult to have somebody become a part of your world, your entity and suddenly, not. Finding out what I found today, I feel no remorse, no sorrow and once again, re-inforced certainty of the choice I made. What I do feel for you, however, is pity. I pity you because until this very day, you hide behind a macho mask that you think is invisible to everybody else when the truth is, everyone can see right through you. I pity that you have made innumerable attempts to send messages across to me through friends who were, up until those attempts, were always on your side. Friends who, today, salute my decision of walking away from you. I pity that you couldn't see love even when it hit you in the face. I pity you for taking it for granted. But most of all, I pity you for bragging about your age when each experience you get, you learn nothing from. To the contrary, every situation you are put in takes a little piece from you and makes you less of a person, less of a man and more like a child. I only wish that you do not continue this way, for the sake of mankind and for the sake of you, a person who afterall, I once knew. I wish you the kind of love that I have today. The kind that takes your breath away, takes you under and gets you gasping for breath. I wish you love that brings out sides of you that you never knew existed. I wish you find life and experience joy in a way you never had before. I wish you love and happiness. I wish you would let go of your attempts to show me how happy you are without me because I know I never mattered and it honestly does not concern me. And despite all the veiled-hate-messages you try sending me, I wish you enough peace to let me go.