JANUARY 25 IN CAIRO

I was here last years when the revolution started. I am still here one year after.

Unfortunately, I don’t know so many people and I don’t understand the language, so I will not play the expert. I will not try to convince you that I know what we call “public opinion” thinks.

About this only one thing is in everybody’s mouth “rabina yustur” (may God help us).

Has anything change during this year. I shall right only my personal perception.

After the Revolution, people were happy, they put baskets for the garbage in the center of the city, they painted all the pavements and the banisters, they designed the flag and the eagle of Egypt everywhere, they bought flags of Egypt, they took photos in front of the tanks…. They had a hope.

After this, we started to talk about thieves and criminals that run Cairo’s streets by night… The disappearance of the police. The unconcern of the army to fix the situation.

In the beginning my young friends were optimistic. “They are going to cheat you” I told once to a gathering. “No, Farah, don’t worry. This is not going to happen”.

It happened with one way or another.

The elections finally started after delay, young people gathered again in Tahrir, Mubarak’s family in jail, Mubarak’s trial started and finally?

WHAT?

The army has still the power, no one is in jail. Poor remain poor, rich remain rich, no one in jail innocent young ideologist lost their life and finally all the world discovered that the “leaders” of the parties are sponsored by different countries each one.

They don’t have ideology, just pocket.

We speak about heroes and they are, but did they die in vain?

I hear several people say “The situation with Mubarak was better. We had works and we had safety”.

Many different opinions, because –as we all know- everyone thinks only about himself and his own profit.

And before the elections, tens of new parties with young people in their composition. Many young candidates, that is something good.

Hours of political meetings, serious or not.  A lot of energy in the country. All these to drive the country in a new era, in a new situation, in a state with freedom, works, studies, future.

And finally, the two dominant parties are conservative. Is that what, finally, an Egyptian wants? In his mind, this is the “wind of change”? Is this the New Egypt?

Did any Egyptian though even for one moment, that he is responsible for many things that happen in this country? That Mubarak is the first and the main responsible for this, but they are responsible too for the situation?

That they are responsible for this mentality that they cannot stand?

The revolutions start first from inside us (heart and brain) and then become action and change the world.

Tonight, the streets of Cairo (from Tahrir to Maadi and from Nasser City to Masr alGadida) are full of people. They are happy, they are waiting the anniversary of the Revolution (one more in this country).

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

FAMILIES

Family is a very strange story.

We all grow up loving our families (or hate them, depend on the conditions) and the rest of our family does the same. But, finally, except of love (that it is doubtful in many cases), how much do we know each other?

How much we know our sisters and brothers?

The answer will sock the majority of people, but the truth is that actually we don’t know each other.

Older bothers go for studies and left behind another member at least five years younger. Both of them continue their lives. In both minds there is the idea of the brother that they know, even if had passed many years of the separation.

My sister, for example, still thinks that I hate green and orange color, because I really hated when I was thirteen years old. And when she refers to her “educated” friends, she says to me “he reads a lot, you cannot imagine how much he reads”, ignoring the fact that I read more than them.

We live with our family till an age (in the same house or not) an after this we separate (literally or metaphorically).

Passing the years, talking with people of different mentality and nationality, I realized that this think happens in the entire world.

We think that we know our family, just because it is our family and we live at the same place, ignoring the fact that, if we want to know someone, we really try. It is not obvious that we know him just because of the family band.

Unfortunately, families stay at what they know till one age and prolong this knowledge during life. That’s why little families are really families (I mean persons that they really knows what happen and how the other members of the family go on, what is their evolution…).

This is not only friendships or relationships that are hard and difficult to keep them.

“Family” (with the really meaning of the word) is something that needs “work” too.

It is very difficult to try to know the others, especially when they belong to your own family and you think rightfully that you know them.

So, you just see what happens and you don’t try to understand it. You see actions and reactions of a person and you don’t look for the reason, you don’t try to find out the real character of him. And –mainly- you never think that things change and as they change they change even for your family. You mature, your friends mature and change.

SAME THING HAPPENS FOR YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS TOO.

MISUNDERSTOODING!

Every year, near Christmas and New Year’s Evening I feel a great grief and sadness. It is the time that I count my life during the 356 previous days.

My criterion is very strict and usually I find myself without any progress. I found my life stuck and my interests unfulfilled.

And this grief comes to hound these days that usually are days of happiness and rest. These days we leave the spirit to have fun and the body to have rest.

But me, not! I start counting and I find the “bill” defective.

It is my character. I never stop. I always want to do something new. I need new thrills to continue my life.

I have to compare my life with someone else’s life to see that I have done “something”.

I have to see other people’s laziness to understand my progress.

I don’t know what is wrong with me. Maybe the fact that I never stop to find new interesting and I want them to… walk during the year and don’t stay unfulfilled wishes.

But some things don’t want to walk and unfortunately I can do nothing. The situation is beyond my control.

This is what actually makes me lose my courage and think that the previous year was lost. Some things are beyond my control, but for me it is impossible this. I want to have the control of my life. The fact that I have to ask for someone else’s help or to count on

Someone else except myself is killing me.

And unfortunately, passing the time, I realize that I need help in my life as I need to wait much time until some of my dreams come true.

I know that putting me on the wall and shooting me is not the correct way, but that’s me.

But I thought for this year to make an exception.

I decide to make my list of “done in 2011” counting the positive things, that means what have I done and not what I hadn’t done.

I need some rest and some recompense in my life and no one else except me is going to give it to me.

VICTIMS

We all know that we cannot change a situation without victims (metaphorical or literal).

Saturday noon, some minutes after twelve, Talat Harb street started -suddenly- to full with people and at the end of the street from the round ground of Tahrir Square, you could see thick black smoke.

People started to run and the owners of the shops to close the shades quickly. Some people immortalized the history with cameras and mobiles.

Walking to the bus station of Tahrir Square, just some meters from the statue-guardian of the area, the army was around the street to control the situation and as you was watching the street, it was like the Mugama Bulding was burning (later I saw, on television, that were the tents that were burning).

From Mashpiro direction, a group of soldiers (sorry, I don’t know the army terminology) was crossing the bus station, walking to the Square. They were singing a song, something like anthem, I suppose to make them feel good and to give them courage.

One person, the tallest and strongest was wearing a hood-mask.

It was like a hangman in the Middle Ages, a master in the porno films, a betrayer during the german occupation, a killer in the B-thrillers…

It was disgusting. I really would like to know how a person like him feels. Which are his feelings? He feels proud? Disgraced? It is an obligation for him or a personal joy?

He feels happy because he has power?

Are the soldiers really hard and inhuman or just they don’t have another option?

At the end of the row, two soldiers were holding a young boy (approximately 18 years old). His was wearing a black footer with hood and his face was full of blood.

Some people were around the soldiers and were talking to them. I didn’t understand the language, but according to my perception, they were asking from the soldiers to leave the boy. The two soldiers were growling “la, la” that means “no”.

And they kept walking. I started crying. It was too much for me. A friend of mine had written in the morning that the previous day a friend of him killed in Tahrir Square.

And I really wonder: Do they really understand that they are all victims. Soldiers and revolutionaries? They are stooges at a fixing chessboard?

Even if there is no fraud at the elections, does anyone trust the politicians? I am sure that finally the real victim will be the people, the wonderful Egyptian nation. Politicians will cheat them.

It happens always, it is not the first time. And you really ask yourself. Finally, we are all and always victims? And what about the real victims? The dead people of the revolution?

I cannot answer. I just feel an enormous anxiety about the future and what I real wish from the bottom of my heart, is not to count any other victims anymore (metaphorically or literally). No more mothers crying for their children.

I hope the heaven is open now, and my wish will be accepted!

 

DICTATORSHIPS

Many times in my life, when I hear the word dictatorship referring to a political regime, I think how much kind of dictatorships there are and oppress our life.

Political dictatorship: It is the classical situation. An insecure, idiot, having complex, small dick, small minded, uneducated, betrayer of his country tries to apply his political opinion by guns, blood, terrorism, fear, disappearance of freedom. I can add many things about this kind of dictatorship, like any other person in the word (we have one in my country too). A dictatorial regime can give the name democracy to itself. But this doesn’t change anything. It is still dictatorship. This is what happens the last years in Europe and in America.

But what about the other kinds of this hateful regime? Dictatorships that determine our life and we don’t eve recognize or admit them like that?

Fashion dictatorship or Lifestyle dictatorship: I love fashion! It makes me feel young! I am not a fashion victim. Even one or two pieces every year in my wardrobe make me feel that I can still follow… the life. But I cannot stand the hysteria. A feast of persons that think the whole world turns around them. And they find a way to feel important.

I don’t speak about fashion people, people that earn their life from fashion. This is their work and I respect it. And is really and impressive work. I speak about insecure, new rich people judge people according to their style and the price of their clothes and the places that they go and the kind of food that they eat…

And yes, this kind of dictatorship is frequently combined with money. Fashion needs money.

I remember the last decade. If you didn’t eat sushi you were at least rustic or miserable. Two decades before this happened with the cream fresh and the rocket (this bitter dark green vegetable) with parmesan salad. And you paid them a loootttttttt.

If you cannot join the club (because you don’t have the money or simply because you don’t like it) then you are lost, you are the “errand boy”.

This is another kind of dictatorship that, believe me, can fuck up your life. It is a very dirty war, an unfair one. Like a low blow. And it is procession of lifestyle.

Money-power dictatorship: As I told before, lifestyle needs money. Life in general needs money. Sometimes I find in the books I read references to the cruelty of the lords and masters. A simple scene in Angelos Terzakis “Princess Isambo” (the story takes place in 1293 during the Francocracy in Greece). The lord gets inside the blacksmith’s place and for no reason takes a burning iron and put it on the face of the poor guy. No one could speak. He was the lord. In Idelfonso Falcones’ “La catedral del mar” which refers to a disgusting medieval law (or right), el derecho de pernada (Droit de segneur), where the lord had rights on anyone, even to do the most cruel things. Here, we are not talking about policy and political regime, but the rights of the workers didn’t exist. Something that happens today too. We live an new Middle Age, but because now we don’t die at 30, we are not exactly hungry, we buy things with credit cards, we think that we are free. But we are not. We work without rights, as much time “the job need us”, because we have to pay the loan of the house, the car, the children school and many other things that premise our salary. And we cannot react. We cannot say anything. Look Greece today and take a better look to the european countries that they don’t have an obvious problem. You will understand about what I talk.

Mentality dictatorship: This is what we call tradition, mentality, way of thinking of a nation. And here we can write millions of words. All the old fashioned ideas, the belief of other centuries drive our life until today. I don’t gossip my neighbors, neither my mother did it, so many years before against our small city mentality. In some places they call it interesting, religion belief, social obligation to involve in other people’s life. Fathers and mothers decide for their children life even in 2011. And people obey and they call it “respect to parents”. The fact that other people decide or their life on their own doesn’t mean that they don’t respect their parents, but just have other idea about their own life. Parents are still deciding for their children studies. This is funny! (at least).

Equally disgusting is the modern mentality, that shows you the way that you have to live and the “empty”, “uninteresting” model that urge.

And people are trapped between their own will and the old mentality. And unfortunately lust little people in every generation can go against this nonsense. That’s why things, mentalities and traditions change so low in this life.

I think all this kind of dictatorship equally dangerous and oppressive with the political ones, because they have their own victims too. And cause serious problems to normal people.  

POWER

I don’t know exactly what kind of happiness and satisfaction can give you the power, the ability to rule and give orders.

Maybe I am fool or maybe I am not enough ambitious. Or maybe my unfulfilled wishes don’t have to do with power. Or maybe I have another idea of the word “power”.

I would speak for myself, because I cannot speak for anyone else (I always sign what I write anyway) and because I want to be as much objective I can.

Most people that have power, they use it in bad way. They use it to fulfill their unfulfilled wishes or to cover any complex they have or to be rich in a very short time…

But what drives a person to destroy a country just to cover his own psychological problems? And telling psychological problems I don’t mean that they are necessarily psychos, but any kind of psychological problems, light or grave.

One good start is the family. If they grow up like a prince, then you will believe that all the world have to obey to you and to your desires.

In the case of politics, this happens when one family governs and gives the authority to the sons. These families grow up the kid putting in his mind that the country belongs to him, like the yard of his house in which he can do anything he wants.

Country it is his toy. Like an expensive MBA ball with the signs of all the basket ball stars, a platinum watch after a success in school (paid by the powerful father) and a cabriolet when he becomes 18.

 After this, we don’t need any explanation. The son sits on the governmental chair and play with his toys: the external politics, the sea, the land, the gas, the petroleum, the products of the country… From time to time changes his toys, he needs variety.

The nation, the people that consists the country whose he is government and makes him rich don’t exist. They are just “products for consumption”. Mean weaklings, annoying insects. And the nation feels it, and sooner or later reacts.

And all the dictators (and there are dictators even in the countries called their regime “democracy”), even the most isolated or the most idiots ones know very well that people hate them. And the panic starts.

And when the panic starts the terrorism starts too. And then they are the nation that feels fear. And the harder is the terrorism from the part of the governor the safer he feels.

And the story goes on.

The same feelings have the politicians that start from low classes in life and in army. And as people with complex of inferiority they are equally dangerous.

Army gives them the power to prove that they deserve something, that they are computable.

Politics in like the Pool of Siloam for every one that doesn’t want to go to the psychologist to solve his problem.

The ceaseless, eternal fight for power and money declares the fear of death. The collect money and power –more and more every day- because they think that they can avoid the death.

HAHAHAH.

Poor creatures. Poor mortal creatures. This is the only sure think in life. And I think this is the most fair. I think God has a great, cynical, cannibalistic humor and he created the world using this humor.

This is the official explanation that the science of psychology gives.

And that’s why they don’t hesitate to order the death of their own patriots. The death of the persons that “feed” them and make them extremely rich. That’s why they don’t hesitate to steal the country that products to feed the citizens and not the drones.

THEY TREAT THE COUNTRY LIKE THE PIMP THE PROSTITUTES.

Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and George A. Papandreou in Greece are two typical examples of this kind of politics. They took in their hands too countries, not any countries.

Greece and Egypt: The two greatest civilizations of the world and they use them like common whores. 

They terrified, stole, killed, depressed, gave job only to their relatives and voters, covered scandals, gathered powers, cheated people, sold the country to the foreigners, used the citizens as garbage and –in case of Mubarak- many things worst than any distorted fantasy and imagine.

They even didn’t care about their fame after death, because history, even it is written under the threat of the governor, FINALLY it says the truth. All the historical lies reveal sooner or later, even after centuries.

God (or life if you want) is fair. Rewards back the goodness and the badness a way or another.

And now, they are both out of the government, powerless, despicable and hateful.

For what? For POWER. For POWER and IMMORTALITY (literally).

They will never win the IMMORTALITY (metaphorically).

PS. I told you, God has a vitriolic sense of humor.

¡DEMASIADO CORAZÓN!

Algunas veces me siento tan vulnerable y indefenso que solamente qiero ser un punto en una página.

Nadie se interesa sobre un punto en una página y por eso el punto se siente seguro.

Mis voces, mis gritos, mis llantos, mis rezos, mis súplicas en vano. Nadie las oye.  Ni Dios, ni Diablo.

Estos momentos, la banda sonora es la canción de Manu Chao “Mi vida”.

Mi problema no es que no pueda enfrentar o resover mis problemas. Es que no quiero dar dolor a los demas. Aún a los traidores.

-         “Eres gilipollas” es una declaraciún que tomo.

-         “Eres como un pan” es otra.

-         “Busca el medio camino” otra.

Cuanto me siento como así, siempre pienso en cambiar mi charácter. Pero creo que ahora es demasiado tarde. Lo que puedo hacer es cambiar los límites personales.

No mas demasiado corazón. Es simple. En la teoría, sí. Pero en acción.

Sí y en acción tambión. Algún momento en la vida, el tortazo es tan fuerte que te obliga cambiar. Y una vez mas quiero dar mis gracias al traidor.

¡Gracias por todo!  

UNFINISHED SYMPATHY

What no one tells us and of course they don’t teach us in school is that when life doesn’t want to give you something, it will come.

Whatever is this, simple, fiddling, enormous: Dream, object, aim or feeling. It will never come.

But we are humans. And this is the problem. Human nature is made to hope, to be optimistic, to try developing the situations.

Human nature creates always an environment that permits us to survive.

Everyone design his own happiness. For me, happiness is a picture. And all my life I try to settle the scenery, frame the icon and hear the photographer (life in this case) to say “say whiskey”.

For my friend Elias, happiness is sounds and music.

In both cases, happiness doesn’t shape. For him, his melody is like the “Unfinished symphony”.

My image-happiness is like an “Unfinished Sympathy”. I beg during all my existence, life to help me fulfill my icon, to show me some sympathy, but unfortunately… “Unfinished sympathy”, “Unfinished image”, “Unfinished happiness”.

The hardest thing in this case is that human nature is always human nature and hope is always one of its… ingredients.

And when you are near to one of the components of happiness, one of the substance that will help you complete or at least to enrich the image, the heart starts to feel, the mind thinking. The hope creates dreams. And you are flying. And mentally you complete all the gaps of the icon and the joy is soooo big! You think you touch the heaven. You walk without step on the ground. All the pieces of the puzzle get in the right place. And the icon seems almost ready to fulfill.

Forgotten feelings come on surface, sun comes until the bottom of your heart, images are creating, moments of life that you didn’t hope to live come in front of your face, YOU START FEEL HUMAN (again).

And then, life comes and blurs your eyes. You cannot see the picture anymore. It doesn’t exist.

The dream gives its place to a cold feeling. Emptiness comes again. Your heart returns to the previous situation. Back to the life that we follow, because there is nothing else for us. We have to bow the head again and continue. Without sun, without hope, without any kind of dream.

Life returns to show you who is the boss. And you start to look at your image again through the photographer’s lens. And the picture is unfulfilled again.

And the pain is terrible, because, for some moments you thought that you could touch the happiness. But for one more time, happiness escaped.

And just one emotion left for you: the unfinished sympathy.

How many times you can face it? For how long someone is able to wait his personal picture to fulfill?

A lifetime? An eternity?   

For how long you can stand “Unfinished sympathy”. And this fucking puzzle always half made?

USED CONDOMS

Recently, I have been used for one more time.

It doesn’t have to do if it happened on purpose or by accident.

The pain is the same. The bad feeling is strong too.

Overconfidence. I trusted someone very much; I loved him with all my heart. I though he has a special heart and mind.

HaaaaaaH. Life is a bitch.

And my reward was betrayal. I didn’t deserve this for sure, but what can I do? It happened.

As the Chinese say “you don’t have to feel sad in two cases: in the one that you can fix the things and in the other that you cannot fix them”.

But my problem is that I am not Chinese and I am not wise. I am just a common person and I have feelings. And when someone hurts me, I feel pain. And if I love him much, I feel deep pain.

Maybe you will find me exaggerated, but I feel like a condom after this. You use it and when you don’t need it anymore, you throw it to the garbage.

No one goes near to a used condom to express his sympathy. It is stayed alone and used in the basket.

I don’t like the big words and I am not a revengeful person, but I believe in universal justice. Some call this justice God. My problem is not the name of the justice, but the justice. And I believe that sooner or later, we all pay for what we do.

I don’t want to take any kind of revenge. Really I don’t, because this will not erase the fact and will not eliminate my pain.

Love is something wonderful. There is not something that anyone cane give and there is not something that anyone can appreciate.

I just want to punch his face and not to see this person again in my life.

But you know, when you give love, you cannot believe why they don’t want it. And it is more difficult to understand why you have to pay for giving love. We you have to be punished. If you cannot appreciate love, at least don’t give pain to the other.

It is like someone takes a part of my body away, using violence. And I don’t know that if the pain or the shock is stronger.

And the problem is that I was blamed. The situation turned this way, that I had to apologize.

I think that I spent energy without a reason and this situation doesn’t deserve to stay on it and spend time on it.

HOW EASY IS TO SAY BIG WORDS!

But what I took from this life lesson –“every cloud has a silver lining”- is that I will never leave anyone anymore to make me feel like used condom again.

And as my favorite Scarlett O’Hara used to say: “As God I will never trust and open my heart to anyone, from now on”.

Thank you for everything. I really appreciate you for this. I will remember it forever. J

LADIES

I hate a concrete category of women in my life: The important men’s ladies (wives, mistresses, lovers, sisters, etc.).

Actually they are unprofessional and they want to do something just to spend their time creatively.

They come to the office holding a handbag that costs your salary of one year and play the expert using the fame of the man.

After two or three days, you understand that they don’t have any idea of working, but you have to shut up and cooperate with them (or actually, to do the job for them).

Women like Susan M. is not a rare phenomenon. Powerful, strong man, benevolent woman. And suddenly, all people start to talk for her, like there was no charity before or no other people in charity field.

And the problem is when you are obliged to “incense” them and support their ego every day. It is disgusting and stressful.

And what drives you crazy is that all these ladies believe that they have a talent and they are proud of it. And if they take a price, arranged by the companies and the connections of the husband they are very proud.

Of course! If you give a prize to someone, he will be very proud of it. But some people have doubts about this. These untalented ladies, have none. They are deeply convinced that they deserve this honor.

This is really pathetic!