Farewells

One week before, my schoolmates arranged a reunion of the class after so many years. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend it.

Thanks to Facebook, I found some of my old schoolmates (who were my friends during school, not only schoolmates). It was a wonderful emotion. I cried all this night talking with them. It was like we were all these years together. We have different lives no, I know, but we still love each other.

But why now we are so happy finding each other and all these years we didn’t make any attempt to meet or to communicate?

I don’t know exactly, but I can imagine.

First of all, when we finish school we want independence. This independence consists in not only leaving our family house or our birth city, but everything that reminds us all these years that other people decided for our life.

The parents, the teachers and our friends’ opinion are everything for as at this age. Even if you are not a revolutionary person, there things from which you want to get rid of. You feel like them are responsible for many things and they are obstacles for your dreams. Some times this is truth.

This “pay off” includes and the schoolmates and the friends of this age to (fairly or unfairly). It is the wisdom and the clarity of thinking, that the time gives, which make you really start to estimate the past. After many years, you understand who the persons you really want to communicate with are. But now, you don’t have any connection with them.

It is very easy to lose someone. One day stop calling, because you are busy or because you have to see a new friend and when you go to your home town only for one day it is very difficult to see everyone and the list goes on…

Everybody “built” his new life and drives it in a different direction, but many years after we want to start from where we stopped. Don’t forget to add to this the nostalgia we feel for the years of our youth, the years that we were thinking that we could rule the world. We want to return to the illusion of our infantile years, when everything was painted pink. In this sense we want to return, we want to return to our dreams. Some of us have fulfilled these dreams, some of us no, but all of us know how much hurts and unfulfilled dream.

And when you are at an age that you don’t have the chance from progress anymore, you turn back to the years of dreams and safety.

And you find your old friends and you see that you are not the only one that took a different way than the one you wanted to walk. You are not the one with unfulfilled dreams.

And then you realize, that in spite all of these difficulties, life is beautiful and interesting.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?    

Paying the price

Foxy asked me one day “You didn’t married, but what shall you do when you will get old?”

“I shall pay the price” answered to him. He looked me deeply in my eyes and this moment I couldn’t decode his look, his feelings, but my heart felt a deep pain.

It was like Foxy wanted to tell to me “poor you”.

Maybe because he knows or if he doesn’t, he feels what it means “pay the price”. He knows how difficult is to “pay the price” in this life.

Even me, when I say this phrase, I am not sure if I am able to pay this bloody price.

I pay the price of every decision of my life, voluntarily or involuntarily. I hate it. It is hard, difficult, it makes me feel uncomfortable and I don’t like it. But I don’t have any ability of choice.

I paid -and I still pay- a very “high” price for my independence.

Look at me, I am here, looking for a new life and you know my REAL feelings about that.

I have to pay. “Give and take” or “Take and give” if you prefer! This is a basic principal of life.

If there are persons that are not obliged to pay the price and they manage it, it is good for them. I don’t know if it really happens, but I don’t have the ability to do this.

It needs power and the question is not that I have it. The problem is that I have to find it. I am obliged to find it.

I shall be alone when I shall be 60 or 70? Yes, Foxy, I shall be alone. What shall I do?

I shall live alone. I just wish to be healthy (bodily and mentally) to serve myself.

Pray for me, Foxy, I need it. I am terrified too. When I think what you think, I stop. I don’t want to think what will happen if.

Pray for me, Foxy, I want it. I can only hope! I cannot assure myself for anything.

This is the most difficult price I have to pay, but what else can I do?

Marry? And this is a guaranty that I shall not be alone? And what will happen if my husband dies or if I get a divorce?

What will be if I get babies and their lives call them to live in America or Australia?

You, see, Foxy? There’s nothing else to do than PAY THE PRICE.

Pray for me, Foxy, please! I am afraid.

But I want to tell you something, because you are young.

Paying the price is something that makes me feel proud. It means that I am a responsible person and I have the “balls”.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?  

Foxy

Foxy is the first person I met here in Cairo. He is man.

Our meeting became under specific circumstances. He touched my hands.

I was hungry for love? Maybe.

Or maybe it was my personal idea for touching. I consider touching more emotional than sex.

I don’t know. I liked him.

He is not beautiful. He has great humor and I like it. He is smart and educated. He is almost honest. I cannot understand. His attitude confuses me.

He is sexy undoubtedly. I like him for this too.

We love the same things, we hate the same things. We read the same books, we think in the same way…

Foxy hurt me and I hurt Foxy. He still hurts me.

He lied to me and sometimes he still does it. I don’t know why. Maybe it is the difference of mentality. Maybe this pushes him to act as he does.

But I still love him. He has all the defects that any man has.

“When I want and if I want”. I don’t like this. This is not his fault. I am always flexible with the persons I love. I don’t put limits. If someone respects my personal limits without I put them, he becomes my friend forever.

If he passes these limits because he doesn’t “see” them, he will be always in my life, but with a lower emotion.

Why I didn’t put my limits with Foxy? Maybe because I liked him or maybe because -finally- I deeply understand him. I understand every good or bad thing he does or thinks. I recognize his motivations, his fears. Everything.

But he doesn’t know. So he tries to cheat me and he hurts me. Man’s EGO.

When he talks and explains, everything is ok.

  

But Foxy cannot talk easily. It is very difficult for him to talk. This is difficult for every man.

I don’t know why I keep him in my life.

He helps me very much and he arranges all my things. With him I am not a “stranger” in the city. He teaches me a lot of things and takes me with him everywhere.

Maybe I (still) love him. When he was going to Tahrir Square during the Revolution, I was calling him crying to protect himself.

Maybe I know that he is honest and helpful and has a good heart.

My relationship with Foxy is blurred. He always confuses me. But every time he reveals another part of his character that I like it. I can confess everything to him and he’ll understand. Even if he doesn’t, he’ll try.

Maybe he loves me, I don’t know.

I give him “tie break” all the times. I don’t know for how long.

He makes feel good any time I see him.

I wish he loved me and be friends forever. But even if he never loves me deeply as a real friend, he makes my life better any time I see him. And this is enough for me.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

I want to go home!

Yes. I want to go home. Even now that I don’t have a home, I want to go home.

I want to feel safe and protected. And I need my own stuff in my house.

I want the kind of life I know. The super markets I know, the bookstores I know. I want specific prices, not bargain all day.

I need to wear my clothes. I need a teacher to teach me the language. I am angry, very angry. And tired.

I am “homeless” almost two years now. What shall I do?

I need to cook to my own kitchen, to use my own bathroom, to leave my clothes on the floor.

Want to go home. I WANT TO GO HOME!

But I don’t have a home.

I want to scream, but I can’t. I want to dance, but I can’t. I want to wake up late, but I can’t.

I want my life. The life as I know it. My life. According to my way.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

I WANT MY LIFE!

I want to go to the gym, to the swimming pool, to the cinema, to the theatre.

I need to wear my clothes again. MY clothes, not “the proper clothes for the country”.

I want to continue my life as before. I WANT MY LIFE BACK.

I WANT TO GO HOME!

ET phone home…

ET phone home…

This is Rara calling…

This is a delirium, I know, but I need to scream. I need someone to hear me.

OH, NO! THIS IS NOT FAIR FOR MY FRIENDS. This is not fair for all these persons that are always ready to hear and to help me.

Mr. Winter is always here when I need him, Hwba too, Gulliver hears me always, Iman too. Foxy arrange everything for me. And my Wonderful Prince Omar suffers when I suffer. 

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

PS I <3 all!

Misogynism? Racism?

In Islamic countries, some things are “prohibited” as the sexy clothes for example. But when from time to time I wear a T-shirt, these that scream or react improperly and childishly in the streets are women, not men. When the air makes my shirt move and uncover my belly, the malignant glances come from women, not men.

Why?

I made this question to myself many times. The easy and quick thought is that man wants to see flesh, so they don’t react. Maybe this is true, maybe not.

But why women react like this? They think that I do something improper, something against the rules? Yes, but they see that I am different and I bother no one (I think). Or it is a hidden jealousy… You do what I don’t do. No matter what is the reason. I don’t care. I cannot understand, justify and excuse always. I want to put my question once. And my sorrow. WHY?

Maybe she doesn’t do it, because she doesn’t want, maybe because she doesn’t can, maybe because it is very hard for her to think and realize some things.

This reaction and attitude from women shocks me, I admit it. And at the same time make me feel sad!

It is said that women are the worst misogynists in the world, more than men.

But… Any way! I am not responsible for her personal situation, whatever it is. I am not responsible for her problems and her mentality.

Why she reacts like this? If I do it against her, then this is racism. Why in the case that she reacts in this way against me is just difference of mentality?

Any way! I understand and I excuse. I do it because this is the way that my mother taught me to act and react.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

Judge “Word”

“How bad to judge people by words?” asked me Mr. Winter.

What a question, my friend. When I read it, exactly the same moment I realized that this hard phrase is the truth.

This moment realized its meaning. Yes, Mr. Winter. We make lists in our mind and we start to criticize and judge people according to the detailed parameters of the list.

Ah, no! She is not so tall, if she had some inches more…

Unfortunately she is not blonde and I like blonde chicks!

I like powered men; they have a different kind of charm! Latin lovers are the best.

And the paranoia of the lists goes on…

Parameters, percentages, details, contracts, terms, all of these signs of our insecurity, personal complexes and our narrow-mindedness.

I want my man powerful (because I don’t have any power. I am not able to have any power. In this world the man is the boss and I accept it).

Oh, this woman is not sexy, she is 35 now (and I am 35 too and I have 10 more kilos than the normal and I she’s better than me. I cannot change, because I am 35 and I am the man. Man is not necessary to be thin or beautiful. And I’ll never have this woman anyway, so I have to “reduce” her as I cannot “reduce” myself!)

We don’t let our heart or our mind to see the other person. The words judge it before we think: tall, short, rich, poor, sexy, ugly, dark skinned, American, woman, career woman, kinky, cold, dangerous, etc., etc., etc., etc...  

Just after a look, we want to complete the list.

The words are more powerful than the substance. Word against person!

What an unfair and hard battle. But we continue it.

The problem is that no one has time to think nowadays, no one wants to think or no one can think?

Why we still let the WORD rule the WORLD? Why we permit to these silly childish stereotypes to direct our lives?

Because this is very difficult to admit that we have defects. It is easier to see it to the others. And finally because just a little percentage of people knows exactly what it wants from its life.

All the others we try to find who we are and what we want until the day we die.

But the positive in this story is that no one can cheat himself forever. There are some moments especially before we sleep every night that we make e review of the day and then we realize who we are.

And then every weak person cannot see the bad part of itself and continue to think that it is perfect. This is a clinical case.

But the person that thinks, stop to cheat himself and the next day start one more time the fight against the WORD.  

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

PS. Mr. Winter you had to be the writer of this blog, not me. You have all the good ideas!

Beloved Voices!

I am very happy today. Yes, I know that yesterday I was sad, but today I am happy.

The hearing of the sound of my mobile (a very common sound, really) was enough to change my mood.

My friend Thanos called me and just when I heard his voice I felt my heart flying.

My friend called my. An Ocean and a Continent separate us, but he is still beside me.

We talked like the good all days, in spite that I have more that five years to see his face.

All these years we communicate through telephone and through the connection that a very strong friendship gives to us. Many years of common life, mostly good and great moments. Almost 17.

I am so happy that this man exists in my life, that he honors me with his love.

I heard his voice and I felt protected, like a child in his mother’s hug, a sweet warmth in my soul make me feel that there’s a place for me in his heart.

When we closed the phone, I was full of power and new energy. He is my left hand.

After some hours, my friend Layla called to describe me the reunion of the old schoolmates. She was very happy and she was talking cheerily and cool about the meeting. Another voice from the other part of the world.

She was transmitting to me all her happiness, her positive energy, her optimism.

I know her more that half of my life, almost all my life. I don’t think that I can live without her.

A whole life together, not in the same place, but our hearts is like one.

She is my right hand.

After this Hwba called me. Another voice. A new coming one. Hwba is the gift of life to me the last years. Always there, cool and wise. We laughed very much. A voice from Egypt, but still a voice.

In spite of the short time we meet each other and our difficult times we had together, our friendship is strong (I hope)! It makes me feel safe and calm.

Hwba is my heart. My little heart. 

Maybe you laugh now and you think that I am a kind of lunatic that lives with voices or I am a person that doesn’t have any friends, but this is not the truth. I am a social one.

But all this situations, good or bad, that you live with your friends make you have them inside you all day, like an indelible tattoo.

That’s why only the sound of their voice is enough to give me joy and make me feel safe and protected.

If you ask me if I love these people, I’ll answer “I don’t have any feelings for them. They are not my friends anymore. They are part of my flesh now, of my own body”. Would you ever ask someone if he loves his eyes, his hand or his eye? Of course he does.

They are my family! My chosen one!

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

* NO, this is blessing!

Infinita tristesa

I am very sad these days, I feel like I walk and there’s no ground under my foot.

Life pass, things happen, but it is like I watch them behind a glass. It is like I don’t belong to this world.

I feel empty. All that things I liked until yesterday, today don’t give me any kind of pleasure. Even my emotions, my dreams, my goals they don’t make any sense to me.

I want to do nothing; I don’t have the energy to continue.

I live in a place that I try to make it my country since a year and a half now, in a house that is not my house… I do things that “they are not mine”.

I life my life and I am absent from it…

I think I lose my time; I lose my life without a reason. That the time passes and I don’t know where I am.

It’s not about trying to find myself. I don’t have any kind of these huntings anymore. I know very well who I am and what I want.

It’s just one of these days that you feel empty and aimless and you see no light in the tunnel.

I left my country to live something new, because my previous circle of life closed. I had to open a new one. A brand new circle that would permit me to hope, to create, to make new friends, to refresh my mind, to give me inspiration to write more true things, to test my powers, my ability to work in another country…

Maybe for anyone else these are not reasons to want to change your life, but for anyone the bet with himself is different.

I don’t know… I am a person that all my life I compete myself. Every bet I lose or win it is for or against me. If I do something -easy or difficult- I do it to test my own personal powers not to show to others that I am able or not.

And finally, this is what gives me the power to overcome all my problems and makes the engine start again.

Knowing my real powers, my real debility, my talents and my defects I always keep walking.

“It’s my life, it’s now or never, I ain’t gonna live forever”.

Sometimes is so hard and difficult, it makes us lose our courage, like me these days.

But, you know, finally we live only once. And it is not a choice; it is an obligation to live as we want.

I don’t live for the others. I mean I don’t live according to the way that the others choose for me. I follow my OWN path.

I live ONLY for myself.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

     

“Be careful what you wish”

This is a very wise proverb, but at the same moment is a very hard one.

Why? Hah! This is the point!

Sometimes you wish for something so strongly and you pray for it and you cry for it and you spend all your energy to succeed it.

But, when the object of your desire comes to your life, you see that you had not think about a detail. A very small, but very important detail.

You wish, for example, for a good job, a great salary, for fame, prestige, power and the list goes on…

And life brings every condition of the list to you. Except of this lorn detail.

Let’s say that in this case is the life of your life. You have the job you wished for, the money, the prestige, everything. But this job is in America and your beloved cannot come with you. And you cannot live without your beloved person!

Ironic eh? You never thought about it? Oh, yes!

It is this small detail that you had never thought to add in your “wants” list. Just a word.

I wish the same thing all my life, but I forgot this small detail.

All my life I wish to find my prince. I made my own list. I want my prince to be well mannered, smart, educated, sexy, la, la, la, la, la, la…

An enormous list, with all my desirable details (as I was considering).

And I found my prince. I found him! He is handsome and sexy and well mannered and educated and… He is blessed by God.

But this small detail destroyed me.

He is soooo young and I am too old. “Too old for rock ’n’ roll, too young to die”.

What shall I do? He deserves the best and I can give him nothing.

Nothing except my love. My love, my affection, my friendship, my care, my interest, my experience…

What shall I do? His heart is made of gold. He is like the water: clear, refreshing, soft, gentle!

I want to give him everything, but I cannot give him nothing.

What shall I do. How shall I handle it.

Why I forgot this small detail? Why always exist a forgotten detail in our lives?

Is this what we call the Murfie law? Is this a kind of reverse of the Universe because it is tired to hear us ask every day?

I don’t know.

I wish I could give myself to my prince, but it is impossible.

But he knows that even under these circumstances he loves me and he will always love me!

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

PS. I love you.    

Asking for hug

“How do you ask for a hug” told me one day Mr. Winter Mushroom.

In the beginning I couldn’t understand about what was wondering my dearest friend.

What does it mean how?

Actually I had never thought how you ask a hug.

I think this is instinct, something that human nature search for. Or in other words, this is what we -modishly- name “body language”. A language that is not be taught in any school, but we all of us know.

This language is superior to anything. Even if you deny that flirt someone, your boy will betray you. Body language is the most accurate tool of our personals expressions, the best way to express our real emotions.

Even if we don’t admit the truth (truth is very hard thing sometimes), it is here and our body express it.

If I like a man and I don’t want to admit it, the body language will undeceive the truth. My body will approach him without my will and it will try to touch him. It is the instinct that works. The human nature.

So, if I don’t have the courage to tell him “hug me” or to use my own favorite two words “PROTECT ME”, my body will find the way.

When I feel that I am alone in this world and “all the cold winds of the world blow against my unprotected self”, then it is my own private body that will ask from my man’s protection. My hands will come towards to him and my head will touch his breast and then he will understand (I hope Mr. Winter) that I need his protection and he will hug me.

But, even if my man cannot read body language, I can just ask him: “please, baby, hold me”. I don’t know why it is so difficult to speak. I cannot understand why people are afraid to talk, to solve their problems by confessing and talking and telling the truth.

The simplest way is always the best, but the simplest way is always the most difficult.

I don’t know why. Sometimes it is difficult for me to tell the absolute truth, to explain the cruel part of life exactly as it is. Taboos, obligatory kindness, mentality, emotions, love, timidity, cowardice, fear, stop us of talking truly to the others.

That’s why nature (or God, if you prefer), invented the body language. To help the entire “coward”, “shy”, “ignorant”, “rough”, “vulgar”, “uneducated”, “weak” people of the world express themselves.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

Matriarchic society

How would be this world, if the song was “It is a woman’s world” and not “It is a man’s world”?

Imagine our world from the opposite, where all the taboos and the prohibitions would affect men’s life. Where men would be the victims of domestic violence, sexual harassment and social discriminations. Workers and responsible for the housework at the same moment.

A world where men might be covered and have their own “excision”, unwanted pregnancies, abortions and menstruation every month.

A world where they men would be obliged to stay home or to give dowry to women, to be used by women only for one night (one night stand). A world that all the stereotypes would oppress men instead of women.

Hard world, eh! Veeeeeeeery hard!

I suggest every man to close his eyes for ten minutes and just think about it. Just try to feel like a woman for ten minutes.

To men that have more courage, I suggest them to spend a day of their lives like women, starting from the house. And for the real brave –if they want- to disguise themselves. To dress up like women. Imagine a covered person under 47 degrees of temperature.

Try to wake up alone in the morning (without a woman’s push) and after this act like your grandmother, mother, sister, wife, girlfriend, maid…

It is sure that you will discover many interesting things. Like Mel Gibson in “What women want”.

I think that you don’t like the idea. No one wants to be on woman’s side. Man’s side is better. It is good to be the powerful one, to decide and create the world “sure measure”.

But I am sure that some men at least they will close their eyes for ten minutes.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?

Who’s the boss?

Unfortunately “ego” is synonym of human nature.

In any kind of relationships “ego” is there. In friendship, in partnership, in families in personal relationships, everywhere.

I understand absolutely the human nature and accept even its worst parts.

But I cannot understand how can “EGO” involved in a love affair.

It supposed that you chose your companion to share your life with him, your love, to take care of each other, to give him everything. Too much crowding, eh?

Where “ego” finds a crack to enter? In love there is place for egoism?

How come to love someone and the same moment you have the feeling to “be the boss”.

This is love? Who is the boss? Who gives the orders? Who is the potent one?

Maybe I am too old fashioned, may I am too romantic. Maybe I am too much fool or too much sensitive. Maybe I am too much unique. I never ask anything from my man. NOTHING. Just a hug.

I don’t know. I think that during our life we face so much problems and persons that we don’t like. We are obliged to speak and work together with persons that don’t like every day, we have to think only egoistically to survive, and we have to be competitive…

So when we go home, something must change. If we don’t feel safe and no competitive with our beloved person, then what?

You call this life? You call this love? You call this companionship?

Am I the only one that my man is my prince and I am his princess?

Am I the only one that is not competitive?

Man is man and woman is woman. We have nothing to fight for. Our roles in life are different. We have different body structure and different hormones. Man “work” with the mind and woman with the emotion. This is the only difference.

Ok, I cannot pick up 100 kilos, but for this reason my man have to be competitive? My man cannot do two or three things together like a woman. I have to blame for him? This is NATURE!

Do you have problem because your best friend (man or woman) is different from you? No. More beautiful, cleverer, has more money? No (I hope).

Why this bloody “ego” is always there between lovers?

Why we cannot leave behind all the garbage we have in our mind, coming from family, school, society, television, magazines, talking with friends, books, taboos?

Why we cannot leave heart decide for the future of our love?

Because we are cowards and we cannot say “I don’t care about anything. I love you. Together we can find a way. Just you and me. No one and nothing else”.

But is this life there are not only cowards, but brave persons too. These are the persons that make the world go round (ok, and money too!) and love still exist.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?