Of Parents, Country and Airports Blues…

My parents visited for 10 days after which I flew back to Egypt with them to spend the rest of the holidays. It was fun having them around in my own space with my own rules it was quite an experience that made me appreciate my independence and realize how far I’ve made it.

Back to Egypt after less than two months from my last disconcerting visit I was more distressed than ever, whenever I feel that I’ve closed this page of my life, a trip to Egypt is all what is needed to prove me wrong.

Perhaps one day?!

On the way back I met this lady; we were on the same bus to the airport but never actually exchanged any real talk. When we got off I noticed that her bag is much heavier than mine so I offered to help and it was not for long before we figured that we were heading to the same destination on the same flight so it was pretty convenient for us to use each other’s company to spend the time. She was a young woman, very energetic and too liberal, compared to woman of her nationality. We discussed politics, religion, relationships, work and life.

The intriguing factor about airport hookups is that both parties know they have limited time to get to know the other. It’s like a crash course in a particular human being beliefs, personality and preferences, it’s like a small life in which you have to meet someone, get to know him/ her, go for coffee, share a meal, and go through some hectic and rough times before you part ways, all within couple of hours. In addition and as an added bonus, being busy getting to know your new temp-partner, helps your mind off the famous airport blues, this addictive blues that only “professional expatriates” are familiar with, the blues that whispers in your ears all the reasons you need to skip your flight and head back home and yet the whisper is not just loud enough for you to miss the final call for your flight, so you just board your flight pushed by the hope of a clearer future than the blurry past you left behind, and by the anticipation that you might just find new memories to speak of without your eyes glittering in grief of what has been... and of what should have been....

I think I’ve become addicted to the airport blues and I don’t think I am willing to settle down and go through rehabilitation just yet...

Expat’s chemistry again?!!! Perhaps.

A lunch with the boss…

Last week my boss – a Japanese man in his mid sixties – invited me to lunch. When he first asked me if I was available this weekend I thought he wanted me to work on some legal issues that surfaced in the past week and before I respond he continued in his – Japanese English – “I would like to take you to lunch, will that be ok?”

I was flattered that a man in his age and position would be interested in socializing with me.

He is a very influential man; he heads four departments in addition to his position as an advisor for the CEO. His areas of knowledge do not begin only with history and do not end with law and economics. Although he is in his mid sixties, he runs, plays football and each year he participates in the marathon.

That weekend, I went to the place half an hour early, it’s just few blocks from where I live. I explored the area around and I was happy to find couple of my favorite food franchises and a branch of my bank there. Although I live in proximity I never crossed the highway to the other side before.

I wonder why??!

We met at the hotel’s lobby and headed to the restaurant. The place was packed with its patrons, mostly Europeans. Everybody was dressed up like it was dinner and not lunch.
Live music was on, with a Pilipino guy singing a song from the seventies, on the table next to us there were a large group of people celebrating a birthday.

That certainly brings back memories; the only difference is that I was on that other table…

He helped me find the food that goes with my beliefs, we shared one fish and that was the only similar thing we both ate, my main course was different than his, my dessert and even my drinks were different than his.

It’s intriguing how cultural backgrounds can manifest in small social event…it gives me an idea of how politics must be like!!

We talked and discussed issues of life, music, history and even war and politics. I walked him to his car and saw him takes off as I started walking home.

It was a nice change from all the study and work that I do most of the times.

On my way home there was a predominant thought going back and forth in my head… would he have asked me still, had we not been expats? Or is it Expat’s chemistry?

Oh but that’s another story…

Of Home & Memories...

“Home” is a real problematic concept. I went “home” for a week and I felt like a stranger, if it weren’t for the familiar faces I would have been completely alienated.

What is home anyways? Is it the place where you were born? Is it where your family resides? Is it your own residence? Or perhaps it is where your heart dwells? Why do I feel home in exile while I’ve spent most of my years else where?!

I thought that my trip home will do me good, it was supposed to be like a trip to ancient ruins which you admire in awe and hopefully its magical powers will set your chemical balance straight.

When did home lose its enchantment, why did home get disgraced by memories of treachery?

When will "home" be home again? When will I ever stop feeling hurt? When will I ever lose sight of betrayal?

Going back to Alexandria with a numb mind overloaded with memories of what was once a sincere genuine sentiment, with an injured deformed soul that used to be humane and a clogged heart filled with hurt and betrayal, walking around in the shady streets, smelling the air that used to be saturated with her scent, going to places that carry memories of us being there, being saluted by those places with a commiserating smile, being inebriated with a trance of melancholy and commemoration of the leave; all in all made me realize that facing my daemons is one thing but facing a good memory turned bad is the ultimate trounce.

I can contend against my daemons, but it’s those memories that I cannot vie.

Blogging a month…

This Ramadan was my first away from home, and something tells me it will not be the last.

For me, Ramadan is a whole set of rituals that have to be encountered to give you the scent of the month, and I am not just speaking of religious rituals, I am taking about personal and social ones let alone sociological behaviors.

I missed the streets of Alexandria just around sunset when every body awaits the call to break their fast with family and friends. I missed the silly shows in the TV and my friends’ gatherings at our favorite spots.

I missed myself in these 25 days more than I ever missed myself in my 25 years of age.

But the good thing is that I enjoyed myself I enjoyed experiencing the ultimate solitude and the snap out of “everything is set” mood.

Ramadan is almost gone now… and with it something has definitely changed… It would be early to tell what it is now...

There is no reason things are this way…

Yesterday there was an accident in which a 26 years old Egyptian mother was mowed down by a truck driver when he mounted the sidewalk and crashed the roads barricades.

I couldn’t help but wonder what is the out come of such tragic event? What is the plan of the “higher powers” for the world to make good by her death? What did she do to lose her life for a drunken driver?

Although I am currently pleased with my state of faith, I just couldn’t help the thoughts rushing through my head as another innocent soul sets in the west never to be seen again…

In one sitcom I was watching the other day, an atheist doctor was asking a religious nurse “if god does exist and he is so righteous, then why all the bad things in the world are happening”. She replied that everything happens for a
reason; and when he was determined to prove her wrong she told him that she has been working in this hospital for almost ten years, seeing young people die and other good people suffer and that she “Needs her faith” to keep her sanity…

Before they conclude their conversation a small girl is rushed into the ER with a stab wound, the atheist doctor looks up to the nurse in bitterness, she stutters and looks down.

Only after and for the bewilderment of the doctor, they discover that the girl had a tumor and if it weren’t for the wound it would have gone beyond control.

The atheist doctor was speechless and spent the whole night rethinking his atheism… he goes to the hospital the next day searching for the nurse only to know that she was involved in a car accident and she went into a comma after which she died….

He stares at her laid in her bed and says “why don’t you tell me the reason for this now!!!”
______________
FADE TO BLACK
______________

It is my belief that any given life is made up of too elements; choices and destiny and the latter being the “voluntary” choices of others.

My belief stands… but something inside me retires…

DANCING while WALKING on the RUNNING machine…

I was cycling at the Gym today and next to me there was this lady who was walking on the running machine, she was young and, strangely enough, just walking very slowly on the machine…

There are reasons why they call those“Running Machines”… YOU RUN ON THEM!!!

Anyways… all of a sudden she started dancing while walking… I thought she was listening to music but I can see clearly that she had no headphones on her… I was amazed by her confident and artistic moves, she reminded me of that night I went out with friends and there was this dance floor on which patrons were dancing and a couple went up there and they started swinging… I am not an expert but I think it was some kind of a Latino dance …They were luring, touching, gazing at each other… they were moving violently and then slowly… jumping, cling closely and then parting… I remember smiling and feeling that right at that moment there could be nothing wrong with the world… it was probably the most amazing dance I’ll ever see…

What can i say...!!!

"There is nothing like a physical art that is performed by the soul..."

In the parking lot of life…

My building has a large parking lot to the south side. When up there; I see people pulling in and others pulling out… It occurred to me that life is of a great resemblance to parking lots… each of us has his own space with his own vehicle - fancy or not – carefully parked in his designated area… sometimes you have the luxury of choosing your ride and sometimes the ride just chooses you and if you are lucky enough you get to choose who rides beside you but sometimes – for arrangements of conveniences – you compromise just for the fear of riding alone all the way.

Every load you put in your vehicle will affect its performance, and your vehicle’s durability depends on how you treat it. The only difference between your life and your ride is that you can change your ride at your convenience but you can’t do that with your life.

You can pimp, paint or enhance your life, but you can never change it. Every little scratch you endure, you will have to face the consequence one day.

You can hide it or just ignore it, but you can never make it go away.

Enough Wasted Youth...

I am now at work, these past two weeks were hectic and tasks were stacked on my office. It is Thursday and I’ve already finished all tasks days before their deadlines. And I am bored but content of my devotion and commitment despite of all what I’ve been through lately.
It is strange how the human mind works when faced by enormous amount of pain… I don’t know if this is my mind playing tricks on me – playing the all numb card – to relief itself of all the undesired chemicals secreted into my blood stream as a result of unjustified guilt, self blame and crucifixion and the pressure these entail, or is it that god had really answered my prayers and deprived me of my pain and spared me.

Either way I am feeling numb. I still get some flashes every now and then which cause me to disorient for some and so minutes… but after which there is nothing… a complete silence of emotions and a nullity of obscurity that – actually – helps me appreciate things and see them clearer than ever.

I am now focused more on the things that matters the most, my career, my dreams that I once sacrificed and most importantly my relationship with God which were retreating over the past years.

I am working in the regional office for a gigantic group that is maintaining eighty one companies in thirty three countries. It’s quite a career jump after working for two years for a company that provides services for three local companies only. I am being paid thirteen times what I was paid before.

What’s with the “three” in the previous paragraph? Even “81” is devisable by three!!!

And despite of all that, I am feeling I am just getting started… I’ve always seen myself as an employee of a big entity and in few years the leader of which… that’s my dream and now I don’t have to forsake it for no one… its just me now… no more sacrifices and no more compromises… I am going to cruise the ocean and realize my dream and there is no space for unnecessary package on my boat… I need to travel light to get their faster… enough wasted youth…

CLOSURE

“My life closed twice before its close;

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.”

- Emily Dickinson -

I need a closure after I’ve taken the hardest blow of my life, the ultimate betrayal, the life changing experience that can only make you worse…

For seven years I’ve devoted myself to her. I have made sacrifices that changed the path of my life; I endured the unbearable. But I loved her… there was nothing I wouldn’t do at that time just to put a smile on her face.

I encouraged her to travel and realize her dream. Before she traveled I told her that if she ever changed her mind after achieving what she wants all what she has to do is to treat me with courtesy. And she took my hands and told me that “this will never happen…”

There is nothing I can say to tell how much she meant to me… but that got to stop… she played me alright… she is not a bad person but she is the worst I’ve met, and that’s not in terms of quality but in terms of the extent of damage that she has caused me… I stopped believing in so many things at once that I am surprised that my whole belief system didn’t just shut down.

I believe that every human relationship you handle takes a part of your mind, heart and soul; whether it is good or bad, that’s not relevant, and now after seven years of her taking a little above 99.9 % of all three … its time that I get sober and handle my own self for a change… I’ll cherish, flourish, and appreciate “me”…

That’s my closure… NO MORE US… just "ME" and that’s how it’s going be for a very long time to come… and I pity her for that… I pity her for what she chose to miss out on…

May be I am just not good enough for her because – simply – I am too good to be hers…

Seven years down the drain...

When you feel affection for someone and you start diluting the intensity of your life to accommodate your partner’s…

When you have reached the limits that you are really ready to forsake your – god given – freedom to be just liberated… yes liberated from your own freedom..

When you crush the fences around your heart and pave the way for this graceful one to walk the extra mile…
When you are sorry for time that passes because now you have someone to share with and you just wished the hour wasn’t just 60 minutes…

When you want to apologize for everyone you ever did wrong just to complete and prefect the peace you are feeling with the universe…

When you are in orbit while the moon isn’t…

When the biggest scarifies are just another errand of your perfectly good day…

When you smile at your enemies and say: “You know what… whatever you do, at the end of the day I win”…

When you feel and experience all the above then you will know a fraction of what I used to feel.

Yes I felt that, I’ve been there, I was in love…

I encouraged her to pursue her dream and evidently to forsake ours…

This is certainly not the end I intended. Most eastern men don’t encourage their partners to pursue their dreams because they fear if they do; their partners will evidently leave them…

I didn’t believe in that… I still don’t want to…

Although I knew she has issues with commitment but what happened lately really crossed the boundaries of what is acceptable to me… for the least of it I feel degraded, hurt and broken…

She stabbed me in the back after she manipulated me for seven whole years… I’ve left my family, friends and my whole life just to provide things that I thought she deserves… and what I get… she does not want to marry me for the wrong reasons being that; and I am quoting her: “I loved her very much, sacrificed too much for too long for her”.

I believed in love, I believed in mature, civilized relationships in which parties are collaborative peers and not a death match competitors trying to crush each other and dominate…

But obviously I was proving wrong and every dominating; disrespectful fucking son of a bitch, pity excuse, of a man was right...

I’ll never be the same again… that’s the only thing I am sure of… and the extent of the damage will only be known as days pass by...

“One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though ... betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope.”

Steven Deitz quotes

GOAL

I’ve never been fond of football, and as I recall it was only twice that I ever enjoyed watching it on TV, both times was more like a national event for my home country, Egypt.

Just now I saw a movie, it’s called “GOAL” it’s about a Mexican young man, who fled into the United States as an illegal alien. He grew up minding his own business, working with his father and in his spare time he played football. One day an English guy sees him play, suggests that he go to England, tries to set him up with a hot shot agent but he fails… so he takes a shot with the Newcastle team president and he scores…

Now the English guy goes back to England after making “Santiago” – which was the boy’s name – promise that he will think about it.

Santiago’s father tries to put him down claiming that people are of two kinds one who serves and others who are served and that they are the former type.

Santiago works his head off trying to save money to go to England and his father takes his money to start his own business… any ways Santiago manages to go England and meets with the English guy… he takes him to Newcastle and he participates in the training but he can’t prove himself… Newcastle team president is not impressed; they let the boy go…

The English guy that met Santiago in Los Angeles gives up and so does Santiago, but the latter tells the former about his father’s theory of “servants and masters”… The English guy chases down the Newcastle president and gets Santiago a month trial…

During this trial he is faced with many difficulties starting from racism and not ending with his asthma attack … but he fights and he finally make it to the first team…

Now, in this movie there is two parallel story lines, although one of them is the obvious and more dominant one, which is Santiago’s, I am more fascinated with the other story line… the English man’s story…

He saw someone with a potential, with a dream, and he fought to help this complete stranger realize his dreams… he was let down… he was mocked and even charged for it… but what did he do???

He fought and won….

I guess the moral of this would be: “Dreams are meant to be realized, if you don’t have any help someone who has, may be then you will find yours”

A Birthday in a starnge city...

“When you are born, you cry and the world is happy but when you die the world cries and you are happy”


Today is my birthday… I spend it alone in a strange city… I received couple of calls and some emails from people I never thought they cared…
Although I have never been attached to this day, and wasn’t ever keen of celebrating it with my friends despite them insisting…
I tell you one thing it’s not fun being alone in your birthday…

It’s not fun at all…

My first Days...

“Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.”

Dag Hammarskjold

My first days at the hotel were full of contradicting feelings… I interrupted my semi -perfect life and decided to go away for a reason… a reason that is worth fighting for, a reason that even worth suffering for... In those days I found condolences in the greater good that I’ll do for myself and my beloved ones by traveling…

The new prospects and horizons that I’ll be exploring and hopefully exploiting for my own benefit and of those who I care about were worth the sacrifice…

There were moments in which I feared I could not do it…
There were moments in which I wanted my life back…
I feared the weakness that might force me to abandon my causes…

Little did I know that my causes will be abandoning me…

ISOLATION

When you are an expat everything changes; it’s a life changing experience that forever alters your notions of what’s important and what your priorities are.

Being away from all what and whom you know, walking around in different streets, breathing different air and experiencing different routines… all of this puts you in a state of isolation that resembles shipwrecking on an island…

Your only priority becomes how to sustain yourself… how to prevent yourself from perishing into what the new circumstances – persistently – demands.

How are you supposed to be yourself when everything around you is different…!!!

No matter how beautiful this island is, you are just homesick… you miss your family, your friends, your streets and most of all... you miss… yourself…