HOMBRES!

I was talking with a friend of mine here, whose mind is exactly the same with every other common man in the world.

According to our conversation he was afraid that if a girl that tells him “I love you” without being his girlfriend. He is afraid that this girl will expect from him something. He doesn’t know what, but he says to me that he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings because she is very precious to him. And if she has feeling for him, then he is in danger.

He cannot understand that there are many kinds of love.

I tried to explain to him that the verb love is acceptable in all kinds of relationships, another world that terrifies him. Relationship?

We call relationship any kind of relation we have will people: in work, in school, in the gym, in neighborhood, in bed, in life, any kind of relation.

In all these kind of human relationships, we put emotions: love, hatred, sympathy, compassion, passion, sorrow, affection, tenderness…

He cannot understand. Giving to man or a woman respectively a piece of chocolate that doesn’t mean automatically that you are lovers or she (he) will ask you to marry her (him).

We have feelings, because we are human beings and not animals, we have feelings because other people need our emotions. We have feelings because life without them would be like saltless food.

This fear of “commitment” for the male is born the same time with the original sin.

And it is impossible to delete it, like we cannot delete the original sin.

I couldn’t convince him for two basic reasons.

The first is this like I mentioned before, the “original fear” of men.

The second is that he didn’t (or he really don’t understand) want to admit that men are very hard. They can use a woman, have sex with her, going out with her, showing off her to their friends, taking the gifts that she buy for them, but they don’t want to give her not even one millimeter of their space. Not even one good word, one gesture of affection (and I don’t mean lovers’ affection), nothing, nothing.

They protect the territory harder than lions or dogs.

They accept any kind of service of woman (sex, reminding of friends birthdays, reminder generally, etc), but when it’s time to show any kind of human emotions, they don’t.

I don’t understand that any man, any man (short, tall, handsome, ugly, fat, thin, poor, rich, good, bad, young, old…) has the idea that women want to set their cap at them. I don’t know why any man thinks that he is in great demand.

Why he thinks that a woman’s dream of life is he.

Why he thinks himself so great.

The first thing that passes from my mind is the way that his mother grown him up to be the master of the Universe.

I really don’t know. But I think that it’s time to put their feet on earth and realize the situation. The real one. We are in the twenty first century and women live exactly as men. They have works, careers, good salaries, they chose the man that they have sex with, can understand the difference between good and bad lovers (you are not all Rocco Siffredi) travel alone. I don’t know what else can they see or live to understand that the things have changed.

How many years more they’ll think themselves the king of the word?

Women don’t wait the prince with the white horse anymore and they don’t kiss the frog hoping him to covert to a prince. Or better, they kiss many frogs, but no one becomes a prince (they have their own fairy tale too).

Cool down boys. The occultation of your feelings shows your big fear and insecurity only.

That means, exactly the opposite that you want to show.

    

MAKE A WISH!

So many years now, I share my very private life, my fears, my happiness, my sorrow with two persons, Thanos and Layla and every. They share their intimate life with me too.

All our conversations, irregardless the content of them, finish like this: “Oh! my dear, I wish you the best…. I wish you to overcome your problems, I wish you the best…”.

To these wishes add the wishes of my family, which are really true, and the wishes of friends and familiars. Some of them are real. Others, no.

As you can understand, many of these wishes have been told in vain. They never fulfill. They never help in your problem’s solution. Their only use is to warm up your heart and to make you feel that your familiars are always there for you. 

But, where are all these wishes going? Where are they going after the failure of your “project”?

Which are really the use and the existence of these wishes?

The moment that we wish to someone, we send him all our love and all our positive energy to your beloved persons.

But, where does it go this positive energy in the case of failure? Nobody knows.

Sometimes, when I think like a child and I see the life as a fairy tale, then I think that there is a house that all the wishes that didn’t find their target go and another one that offer hospitality to all the finished love of this world.

But I think that the role of the wishes in our life is not only to help us to obtain, to succeed in our dream but mainly to make us feel able to dare to try or to fight for it.

Their real use is to show us that someone is near to us, he loves us and support us.

To make us feel strong and invulnerable during the period that we need help and support.

According to this, not even one wish is lost! And they are all and always welcome!

And a wish is for free, not costs anything to whom say it!

WONDERFUL WEIRD (mr.) WINTER

I don’t remember if I have ever told how I and Mr. Winter became friends, but I shall narrate this in brief.

One day, I accepted a “Friend request” on my FaceBook account. According to the photo, he was a 13 years old boy, with the full rappers’ trousers and a hat standing one a column. Before coming to Egypt, I didn’t have time to spend on FaceBook, so I didn’t know how exactly work, I didn’t know how to see a person’s “photo albums”. And I think that Mr. Winter didn’t upload any photos of him these days. Just abstract photos. And I thought that he is a school boy.

I accept the request, I don’t know why. I thought “why not?”

Some day, we simply start talking. One day we were talking about Arabic language and he send me a photo, some men that were fishing, and said to me “Farah, if you want to learn Arabic, you have to meet real people”.

I was very sad then. I thought that he had the idea that I am a European girl that knows anything of the real world, I grew up in aristocratic salon and other things like this and I was convinced that he will never talk to me again.

He did. When I told him about this fact, he didn’t remember it. I have to tell you that Mr. Window forgets easily.

Some day he put photos of himself on FaceBook and in spite of I saw his face, I couldn’t change the first impression, the 13 years old boy. I ask him: “is that you in the photos”, he said me “yes”.

Many Facebook friends are very boring, rude, annoying or start flirting you, like this is what you were waiting in your life. An absolutely unknown person to fall in his arms. FOOLS!

Mr. Winter is a very special person. He is very polite, educated, cultured, he sees the things under a different aspect, he is a good friend he has a very good appearance (he doesn’t believe it), he reads a lot, he can inspires you and he likes CHOCOLATE. And by the way he is a director, a cinema director. He is responsible of this blog and of many things will come in the future.

When I came to live in Cairo, one day I ask him to meet each other. He didn’t believe me. I ask him “Why not? We are FaceBook friends, we have a good relationship and I want to see you. You live one hour and a half from Cairo…”

He came. I couldn’t believe. Two meters, big body, shiny smile…

He says to me many times, that other people find him a weird person. Girls find him weird too. And many times he is disappointed. It is very logic to feel bad about this.

But Mr. Winter ignores one thing. Charismatic persons always are considered weird by common people. It is not easy to admit that someone is better than you, but when his smartness is obvious, you cannot say that he is fool so you say that he is weird.

Especially here in Egypt that the majority of people take life as it is and they don’t care to change anything of this oppressive mentality, because -au font- they feel safe doing what other people do, Mr. Winter and all Mr. Winters will always be weird.

Other people will never understand your smartness, Mr. Winter. They want to live a quiet life, to follow the way of their fathers, even if they don’t like it. You don’t know that all the kind of revolutions from the small personal till the big ones need bravery. And bravery is not an easy thing. It needs a very strong character to have the “balls” to change things. And you have it. Even if it is a small daily habit.

Even the way you behave is different.

Girls here (that become women through marriage with small personal experience of life) from their father’s house go to their husband’s. They don’t have the experience to distinguish that you are different and when they see it, they are afraid to discover what this “different” means. Trying to find out what this “different” is, they risk the safety of the known life. They will not risk it, at least not easily.

Charismatic people are always alone, my friend!

Keep walking, Mr. Winter. As a famous Spanish poet says “Walker, there is no path. You create path exactly the moment you start walk”.

:*      

Ramadan Kareem - رمضان كريم

I adore the islamic calling for prayer: الله اكبر الله اكبر .

My personal reasons are not religious, I admit it. But I like it so much. Wherever I am, especially now I live in an muslim country.

In spite of “if” I believe and “what” I believe and “how” I believe, but I love this daily ritual. And I really feel impressed.

Every Friday so many million people…

It is very impressive and affecting, in XXI century that people believe in something. When all around us break down, so many millions believe. They have a belief. I say again, I don’t say that I agree with this or not. I don’t say I like it or not.

Coming here I had been obliged to left behind many stereotypes, as a think my Egyptian friends did, and I am very happy for this.

I cannot stand the model “galabya=terrorist, arab language=fool”. The trick is too old and old fashioned that even Americans don’t believe it anymore.

My friends here taught me many things. During my life maybe I forgot some of them, maybe I have never learn them.

This is the benefit of living in different countries and knowing different mentalities and ways of living.

I am very grateful to my muslim friends.

Maybe this is the reason that during Ramadan, when I hear the evening calling, this one that breaks the fast, I feel my eyes fool of tears and I say to myself: “now million of people drink water and after some minutes they will eat. Happy that one more day they fulfill the orders of their belief”.

Ramadan Kareem (رمضان كريم), dear friends! 

KISS THE FROG

I always loved ducks and frogs.

And some one will say to me. “OK. I understand why you love ducks. They are adorable, cute, clean... But frogs?”

I don’t know. I love them.

When Mr. Winter gave me as a gift Kaza (the picture of a frog)… OK, OK. He didn’t exactly give him to me. I steal it. I download it from his FaceBook albums. And now he cannot take it back.

When Mr. Winter “gave” me Kaza I asked myself why I love frogs.

Everyone knows the fairy tail with the “Princess and the frog”. For everyone the frog was the hateful creature.

First of all I felt admiration for the princess. Brave girl, she had the courage to do what any other human being didn’t do it. She did the impossible, the despicable!   

And finally, she gets her reward.

After this, frogs are very ugly animal. They don’t have the beauty of a gazelle, the power of a puma, the height of a giraffe, the delicacy of a flamingo.

It is an ugly, fat, small, disgusting thing and in additional it eats flies. OH, COME ON. EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO BE LOVED.

So, gradually, I started love frogs.

Add to this that when I was a child I was hated the green color (and the yellow too), but now the bright green and orange make my day.

And this crazy company of frogs that never sleep and have a party every night, it is something very good for me. A frog party animal. A frog bon viveur.

For my childish eyes, kissing the frog has always a reward, a good one.

For my girlish eyes, “yes he becomes a prince” and all the girls wait for a prince (admit it or no).

For my womanish eyes I have always the hope that one of the frogs I kiss will not stay frog (every woman has this traumatic experience. They kiss the fro with the hope to become a prince, or at least a groom, but he remains a frog).

One way or another, kissing the frog has a risk. You take it.

You have a benefit of no because of this kiss.

If you don’t take another kind of benefit, at least keep the experience (this is something like consolation).

For my tired womanish mouth, I hope that the next frog I shall kiss he will be a Prince (or at least someone of his office).

<3 u Kaza     

Why people want children?

I was watching a movie, a greek comedy of 1962. The story was about a narrow-minded father that he was demanding his only daughter to obey to his ideas and to live according to his orders.

Unfortunately, this mentality exists here, still in the 21rst century.

And I wonder: why people want children? Why the want to be parents? Really. What is the real reason?

“I came to this life and I like it so I decided to bring more people to see how it is”.

“This is the only option I have. If I don’t get married and have children, what else shall I do in my life? I don’t have any personal dream or ambition”.

“I bear children, because I need someone to take care of me, when I shall be old”.

“I bear children to confirm to myself that I can”.

I don’t know. I am not a parent, so I don’t criticize. I don’t like to do it, anyway.

But I don’t like this aspect. “My children have to behave as I want, to act according my rules, to do the ‘correct’ because I don’t want the neighbors gossip me, I want my children to fulfill my own unfulfilled ambitions…”

I don’t like the opinion that children that they have to act like soldiers, obeying to parents’ rules.

I think that this way of thinking is not only more selfish than selfishness, but it is disgusting too.

When I hear that a father kills his daughter (this is a man’s world) because she humiliate him, he exposed him to the “spotless” society, I’m driving crazy.

What is this terrible thing that your fucking mentality cannot accept and you become a murderer for what? You kill your child for what? For the acceptance of the others?

To be acceptable and smart guy in front of your friends in the café?

And what about your child? Your own flesh? You born it.

WHERE IS YOUR LOVE. IT IS SUPPOSED THAT WE BORN CHILDREN BECAUSE OF LOVE…

It is supposed the love is above all. It is supposed. But no one can escape from his own prison that it calls mentality, society, religion, local customs, civilization! 

“I don’t understand why you don’t want to create a family, Farah”, Foxy asked me one day. “You have a family, you have a child and you leave it and that’s all. The child asks you nothing, it grows up alone…” 

I don’t know, my dear Foxy. Maybe you are right!

Choices

How easy is to make our choices in life? I mean the real ones, the important.

How easy is to understand absolutely the conditions around you, to balance the consequences? How easy is to comprehend what will happen if you take this way or the other?

 

 

 It is not. When we are talking about choices, we must have in mind -except of the conditions- the character, the personal fears, the financial situation of the person and many other things.

I hate people you talk with them and the say easily and without thinking “this is your choice, “that was your own choice”…

People that criticize and always to put the blame on the others, considering them unable to make a correct choice. That have the solution for everyone else’s problems and they never talk about themselves. And especially hate people that without knowing the whole situation “spit” on your face the obvious solution, like you are a fool one and you cannot think the obvious.

 

 

Of course they don’t know the whole picture; of course you don’t have said to them the whole thing (maybe because you don’t want…), but they never think that they don’t have the right to express their opinion.

And of course you know the obvious and the ideal choice before of them. But you are inside the problem, they don’t. You know all the parameters, the real depth of the problem and you make a choice according to them and the current situation of course. The only thing you don’t need is one negative -quick and easy- opinion of a big mouth that considers that he has to express his opinion.

 

And of course he would make the best choice if were in your position. Of course he has the courage to go against all the obstacles for the perfect choice.

Yes! But he is not him. He doesn’t know anything about the real situation.

Unfortunately we are called to take the most important choices of our life under abnormal and difficult circumstances.  

 

 

We never have the clear mind to make a choice when the rope is around our neck. When we need money desperately, we shall borrow from the bank, even if the interest is very high. Of course, you know that is not the best choice, but your house is in danger. You don’t want to lose it. If, if, if, if… Yes, but you don’t care about ifs, you need money.  

When you are alone in the world and you live from your salary and you have to pay the rent, the one that chooses about you, is not the logic, but the fear, the insecurity and the practical daily expenses.

No one can blame you about the choice you make. Of you know how to handle the things, but the fear of not having money to pay the rent changes the choice. Oblige you to choice with a gun on your temple.

This is a choice you make. Of course. But what are the circumstances that determine this choice. Do you have any other options?  What are the options you have when you have to pay the rent?

Your fear doesn’t let you any options. Of course for the others are options, because they are not in your shoes and they don’t have the fear to press them.

Of course we always have the ability to make many different choices about a think, of course nobody oblige us (literally there is not a man with a gun to press you) to do this or that. Of course our choice is “our choice”, but I would like not to hear any criticism about anyone’s choice.

The one that makes the choice knows better. And especially better than his… judges.

And, you know? When you make one bad choice, you already know it, and the only thing that you don’t know is someone that hint you the “correct one”.

   

   

   

The utility of the Mistakes

Do we really let our mistakes to “teach” us?

Do we really use the mistakes of our life to build a better way of thinking, to correct our debilities and our reaction?  

Do our mistakes make us wiser?

 

.................... 

 

Paulo Coelho writes in one of his books that is something happens many time in our life, it is not a kind of punishment, but it happens to oblige us see what goes wrong and correct it. If, for example, my friends always betray me, I shall see it as personal misfortune. I shall start mewl “I’m not a lucky person, I am unfortunate, why me again, etc., etc.”

 

I’ll never think that it happens because I do something wrong. I mean I see that this person is not proper for me, I see his bad character, but I do nothing for them. So this thing happens again and again not to punish me, but to… teach. To show me that I need my own limits in my life that everyone respects, how to avoid improper persons.

But if I do the same thing many times, it means that I learn nothing from my mistakes.

Sometimes happen in our life very serious events, which change its route: a very bad illness, a loss of job, a death in our closer circle, a divorce…

After these very hard “buffets” of life, it’s supposed that we have to change our way of thinking. But do we really do it?

Ego is a very bad characteristic of the human nature. It is ego that never lets us think clearly and take the correct decision. This ego, combined with the personal fears and unfulfilled desires of every one, is the suitable environment for the growth of any kind of meanness and misery.

So, the buffet of life must be very-very hard or we must mature very-very much to permit ourselves to make a step on.

We permit to our mistakes to teach us under these two circumstances.

Yesterday, for example I remembered one of my colleagues at work that she had treated me very bad many times.

Personally, I don’t have any problem, because if you treat someone bad or yell to him or humiliate him, actually you don’t harm him. On the contrary, you show your own dreadful and uneducated character. You are the worst advertisement for your father and mother.

The problem was not exactly they way she was treating me, but the way she was doing her job. She couldn’t know how to work and for this reason she was mad with all around her. Finally, she lost her job (but after many years). When she went to another job (she tried many years to find one) she acted like before. She lost her job after four weeks.

She learnt nothing from her mistakes. And she is not the only one.

Laziness

I love to be lazy. I was born to be lazy. Laziness is my nature.

I cannot go against my nature. My nature is beyond everything and beyond my control!

I just want to have the ability not to do anything.

But for an unsolved reason, I always work like a dog (I really don’t know why we use this expression. 

I have never seen a dog working). 

Everybody says to me “Oh, no. You are going to be bored very soon!”

They don’t know that I almost never have time to look the wall or the ceiling for ten minutes. I am always so busy that if I find these ten minutes, for me is an incredible luxury. A special gift.

I work very fast and very effectively and nobody believes I am lazy. My opinion is this: “if I go to work and lose these times of my life I prefer to work. I am not there to spend my time or to convince the others that I work. It is very boring and loss of precious time.  

For me, lazy time is blessing. Through the laziness I can reform.

It is great when you watch silly serials on television, just to let your mind rest.

To put in order the books that you plan to read or to take more ideas just looking at them. To make my schedules for the future, organize everything without thinking. This time is working the subconscious. And when the laziness goes away, the “conscious” starts working.

When you move your body from bed to sofa and from one sofa to the other…

Of course after five hours I feel boring.

During the lazy time I feel an enormous happiness. I feel that this emotion is only mine and no one else can take it away from me. No one can enter in my life these moments.

 It is like you are alone home, nobody can see you and you can stay naked, eat with your hands, stay on the floor, get drunk...

Spending time without anxiety and stress is something very rare nowadays. But some of us are afraid of this laziness. Maybe when we are staying without something to do, we think things that we don’t know, but I don’t want to talk about bad feelings now.

I just want to praise the meaning of laziness in our life. When with empty, relaxed mine we can create new ideas, make new plans, do silly things (like polish my nails three times with different colours, walking till the next super market enjoying the way, etc.)

This coolness, this slowness to do anything, this denial to do anything, this natural denial that the modern way of living make us forget of feel guilty for it.

I don’t know, maybe Donald Duck is responsible for everything. When I was a child and I was reading his adventures and I like watching him laying on his swing, drinking his juices under the sun.

Now I know where my laziness comes from. “The bad companies”.

Put the blame on Donald, boys!

Noon time

How much I love this time of day, after the lunch, between three and six…

Since I was in school, it is my personal part of day (and the little hours too, but these represent other emotions).

My parents were sleeping, my sisters were out of house and a peaceful silence was reigning all around.

Especially the summers, with the blinds closed, it was my one special daily gift.

I was opening the radio -all my adolescence is combined with radio programs, books, magazines and movies- and a whole new world was revealing to me. New music, new ideas, new information, new civilizations, all brand new and impressive to me!

The volume of the radio was low (the sleeping parents) and the music of the orchestras was coming softly on my ears: Rhapsody in Blue, A Little Night Music, The Rite of Spring and so on…

What blessed noons!

 "this is Symphony  :)"

This time of day I was dreaming of my life. I was dreaming and I didn’t even have a clear idea of what world is. What does it mean, will, dream, desire!

My world was built of all this wonderful material, the material of the dreams. Around me was a net, transparent, precious, protective and sensitive like the wings of a fairy lady.

These noons, I was planning (according to a child’s mind) my future life, or -as now I understand- I was acquainting with all this stuff that in the future would be my life. All these things of which my life is consisted of.

These noons were responsible for my social consciousness (the radio programs with criticism of the current situation and the political magazines), my love for any kind of concerts (the music programs) and my eternal love for books (the newspapers and the magazines with all these pages about new editions).

The low volume of the radio made me have the sense of doing something “secret”, “forbidden”, “personal”, that no one else had to know it.

After six, my life was starting again. But these three hours was mine. Absolutely mine. It was my own private world that no one could penetrate. No one could enter to my world.

Have you ever tried to explain to kid something according to the adults’ way? Yes? Then it is sure that the child didn’t understand anything.

You have to enter to his own world, to understand what happen to his own private world, to his “Own Private Idaho”, and then try to explain to him the situation according to his childish fantasy and reality.

This was my world. A child’s world, more fantastic than real, where everything was magic.

When I started to work, I lost this private time. I had time only at the end of the week, but now everything has changed. I was not a child anymore, I started to see the reality more than the fantasy, but still this is my… ritual. This time has still this magic of my adolescence.

Now the time is not enough, I don’t have so much personal time, I cannot read a book every day as I did during my school time…

But, during my vacations, I become child one more time and do exactly the same thing.

I DO WHATEVER GIVES ME PLEASURE.

If you think better, you realize that always exist an way in life to do what you want!