Bondok's School of Real-life Skills - What College Should Have Really Taught Us

Craig was late for class again. But it was OK.

"Craig, aren't you late for class or something?" Asked Kyle, who spotted his friend Craig walking with theatrically exaggerated slowness towards his class. Craig turned around at the sound of his name, and upon spotting Kyle, started walking towards him at the same comic pace.

-Oh, hey Kyle! Nah, it's cool, it's an assignment for SOAR 381...

= Sounds interesting! What course is that?

- "Shrugging Off Adult Responsibility 101". This is our Nothing Happens If You Are Late For Class assignment. The professor asked us to come late to prove to us that all that bullshit about being on time is completely irrelevant in real life.

=That's kinda weird, dude. What if you're late for a meeting at work or something?

- That's the next chapter in our curriculum. It's all about giving adult excuses like an adult, like "I blew a tire" or "I was feeling a bit under the weather" or "there was an intense traffic jam" or if you live in Egypt, "someone bombed my neighborhood". Then we're gonna discuss other important topics, like "turning off your phone to be conveniently unreachable" and "pretending not to have internet when you want to pretend like you didn't know about certain social events or work e-mails".

=Wow, that sounds like a blast! Is that an elective?

- No, I'm majoring in "Corporate Whoring", so it's one of the required courses I have to take.

= Is that a new major?

- Yeah, this is only its third year. The program takes you through various aspects of Corporate Whoring, such as:
* Formal Attire (FA 103, 286 and 302), which teaches you to dress-up like the corporate, blood-sucking fucking whore you hope to one day be;
*Ass-Slurping Successfully (ASS 209 and 304) which takes you through various methods of brown-nosing and ass-kissing;
*Number-Crunching (NC 102, 308, 412) which teaches you Excel (the only tool you're ever going to use in your career);
*Shrugging Off Adult Responsibility (SOAR 101, 213, 312 and 416) which is all about teaching you creative excuses to throw at anyone who inquires about your failures/behavior, and how to shift the blame to someone else if they press you too much.
We also take;

* A Bullshit course (BS 316) as an elective to refine our public speaking skills and our CV-dressing up skills;
* A Public Image course (PI 212) to help you cultivate an artificial successful, arrogant douchey exterior to the envy of your friends. It also covers interesting topics such as "choosing your friends according to their looks and success" and "creating misleading Facebook and Instagram profiles" and "pretending to have a social life";
* Filing 101 which is a very important first step on the corporate ladder;
* Corporate Nutrition (CR 213) which teaches you to survive on snack-foods and the either badly burnt or raw food that you tried to cook for yourself, while also providing you with the tools you'll need to deal with your future caffeine addiction as a corporate whore...
and let's not forget the important political science courses such as;
*Office Politics (OP 319 and 330), which can help you pretend to be cute and cuddly and friendly at the office when you're internally raging at the world that woke you up at 7 am and swearing red vengeance.

=That's an intense program... My major is all about calculating who pays what when you're splitting the bill with other people at a restaurant.

-Yeah, I'm minoring in Receipt Accounting. I figured I'd give myself some extra options, you know? I'm also minoring in "Salary Management and Rationing", to give myself that extra edge and so I don't completely run out of money by the second week of each month.

=I think I'm going to change my major to Corporate Whoring too, it seems to have a more promising future.

-Yeah, that'd be awesome! And then I can screw you over and have you reported for some made-up crime for my SOAR project!

-Are the courses hard, though? My GPA can't handle a plunge right now...

=Oh, it's completely cool! In Corporate Whoring, the lower you score, the higher your GPA! It's all about teaching you that if you can bullshit your way through life, it's all gonna work out for you, hard work be damned! So if you're a graduating senior on probation, it means that you're graduating with highest honors!

<a couple of stoned hippies pass by, and Craig's facial expression immediately changes>

-No matter what you do, do NOT mix with those Algebra hippies. They're wasting their time and money on a major which is all about asking questions nobody cares about and you'll never use algebra in real life and they're never gonna get a real job.

<COUGH> PHILOSOPHY <COUGH>.

Fucking hippies...
Fucking philosophy.
Fucking algebra.

Scamation Vacations

Disclaimer: Before I piss anyone off, I have nothing but respect for Somali people and I hope that one day soon Somalia will be prosperous and that Somali people will live in peace. This is just an elaborate joke and is not intended to offend.

*************************************************************

You’re on your way home from work. Traffic is unbelievable, your A/C broke down in the middle of August, and you’re slowly melting. Not only that, but your radio also broke down for the sake of this story, and you’re beginning your gradual descent into madness as you start to have a heated (no pun intended) debate with yourself about the failings of capitalism. Suddenly someone bumps into your rear bumper and finally gives you that final tip off the edge, and you fly off the handle and get out of your car to give them a piece of your mind when you realize that the car that bumped into you is full of construction-worker-type guys who are looking for an outlet to vent out their frustration (and your face is readily available), so you end up waving at them cheerfully and gloomily walking back to your car.

Does any of that ring a bell? Did you ever stop and wonder what it would be like to leave all this behind and go on a fantastic, literally once-in-a-lifetime trip?

Well, look no further, because Scamation Vacations is here to help!

What we offer for the nominal fee of $5000 per person is an exclusive two-week vacation in beautiful Somalia, where the fun never stops! Not only will you be staying at a 2-star hotel, in a room with a guaranteed view of the Indian ocean because the hotel hasn't installed "walls" yet, but you will also have occasional access to such luxuries as indoor plumbing, running water and up to 45 minutes of electricity per night. Not only that, but you will also experience the pleasure of foraging/murdering for your own food, which is guaranteed to satisfy a primal urge you didn’t even know you had. There are also several activities at the hotel, such as standing guard in shifts with an AK-47 to keep out marauders and thieves; prayer hour as you and your loved ones huddle up close and pray to God to live to see the morning; and voting which person to slaughter and eat in order not to starve.

But don’t let the hotel restrain you from the lovable chaos outside its electrified fence! If you venture out, you would be able to witness first-hand all the things that make Somalia great, such as the refreshing, sweltering heat; the famine; the drought; the heavily-armed terrorist groups; the heavily-armed resistance, the heavily-armed government forces and the heavily-armed pirates battling it out in a close-enough-to-taste-the-blood-as-it-spatters-on-your-face free for all. And if you’re lucky and able-bodied, you might even be recruited to crew one of the many pirate ships that patrol the Indian ocean, where you can live out the life of a 16^th century pirate in the age of GPS and guided missiles… What could possibly go wrong?! Also, If you're a woman (or an especially pretty man), don't worry, you might not get a job as a sailor on a pirate ship but sex trafficking is a thriving business in Somalia and being sold abroad as a prostitute is a very viable alternative! Just think of all the STD fun!

If you’re not the adventurous type, however, we highly recommend that you go to the capital and experience the Somali culture and traditions first-hand, such as decapitation, starvation, ethnic cleansing and the occasional genocide. If you should also feel inclined to pillage, rape and kill the locals, you are highly encouraged to do so: in fact, Somali people are greatly offended if you don’t at least attempt to pillage, rape and murder them. If you decide to pillage, we highly advise you to steal/sample the local cuisine, composed of such delicacies as grilled rats, human-corpse-souflet, and cactus soup as well as seawater sweetened with human blood. As for those of you planning their romantic honeymoon, you'll definitely enjoy the beautiful fireworks/drone strikes as you flee for your lives from the fiery rain of death. It’s everything you’ve ever dreamed of!

So go on www.totallynotrippingyouoff.com now and book your tickets, available for a limited time only! If you book them now, we’ll also throw in an apocalypse-survival kit and a multi-purpose assault rifle to add a special flavor to your hunting. Don’t miss this relaxing, once-in-a-lifetime experience (because it will likely be your last). Order now!

Before We're Cold

You look at me with an angry glare
I smile back with a blank stare
You hesitate just long enough
For me to give an awkward cough

Instead you turn and storm away
Why are you angry? I couldn't say
I think it's because I hate her feet
Or maybe it's about the toilet seat

Either way, the point is moot
She'll fume until she turns to soot
I really don't see why she's so mad
I'd said something that made her sad

"I meant it not!" I tried to yell
But old English is hard to sell
To an angry girl; she flipped me off
And went to a corner in which to scoff

Don't get me wrong, I'm not amused
but her overreaction has me confused
She knows that I'm devoid of tact
And I left the toilet seat up, in fact

But then, so what? She has that smell
A weird mixture of eggs and hair gel
She walks lopsided and snores at night
And farts when she thinks I'm out of sight

She lies upside down on the couch
And always has a pronounced slouch
She says bad jokes, at which she'd laugh
and then she'd yell at restaurant staff

What was my point? I think I forget
Oh yes; this relationship I seem to regret
But we're all human, we all have flaws
We should not fight without a good cause

Up an ivory tower, it's easy to judge
But maybe someone will give you a nudge
And then you'll fall to a lonely death
And curse yourself with your last breath

She might have flaws, but she's so sweet
She has that dazzling smile when we meet
She's made me laugh and shared her food
And never opened her mouth as she chewed

I love her and I know she loves me
To everyone, that is very plain to see
"I'm actually sorry" I suddenly realize
I think I might just go apologize

Because we're only alive now, you see
And who knows how long it will be
Before warmth fades and we grow old
Then our frail old bodies turn ice-cold

But as Life is short, there is no time
For me to make more words rhyme
So with all the love within my heart
I conclude this work of art

So we dance away, and we bask
In each others' warmth, but then you ask:
What did you say to make her fold?
"Come on, let's dance before we're cold"

I Hope You're Happy

This post is the conclusion of another blogpost I wrote earlier, titled "Real Beauty".

*****************************************************************

I really do hope you're happy.

In a parallel world, we could be curled up on a couch, eating pizza and watching bad chick flicks which you picked out.

We could have had those annoyingly cheesy "no you hang up" conversations until one of us got cut off by the phone service provider because we ran out of credit.

We could have gone to those fund raisers you're so fond of and raised money for one of your good causes even though I was out of money and had to wake up early and all those excuses I'd have made up, but you'd have made me go anyway and earned my begrudged respect.

You could have met my friends and I would have tutored you on all our inside jokes so you wouldn't feel left out.

You'd have done the same with your friends, if you knew what was good for you.

I'd have come to your office on your birthday and made an embarrassing scene and maybe set your things on fire like Ross did to Rachel that one time.

Actually, come to think of it, I'd probably have found an excuse to make a giant gesture every other day because that's what I do.

You'd have shamed me into giving away half my money to homeless people and beggars on our way to dinner, so that we'd only have enough money to share an appetizer and a glass of water, having fits of laughter at the disgusted expression on the waiter's face.

We'd have a private language that no one else understood.

We'd be that couple who everyone else would use as an example for true love.

We would have had inexplicable fits of laughter over random things that only make sense in our heads.

You would have played your really bad music on my car's speakers and somehow I wouldn't mind because you're enjoying it.

We'd have long fights about very stupid trivialities and not talk for days until we intentionally forget about the fight because one of us had a joke or a funny situation to share and couldn't wait any longer for childish disagreements to resolve themselves.

You'd drag me kicking and screaming to go shopping with you and I'd jokingly mumble all the way there and then inexplicably have fun, even though you'd clean out my wallet doing the activity I hate most in the world (shopping, not cheating on me).

I'd proudly present you to everyone I know as the girl I plan on spending the rest of my life with.

We'd have a far away wedding and a serious discussion about the 12 people we plan on inviting.

We'd grow old together and have that happily ever after ending with the kids and the dog and the riding off into the sunset.

You wouldn't think this post was creepy.

But life doesn't work out that way. We don't always get what, or who we want. In a perfect, parallel universe, we'd be together and we'd be happy. But this is the real world, and you're with him and there's no way to change that. All I can do is hope he makes you as happy as I would have made you.

No, I don't mean to make you feel like you missed out, I genuinely wish that.

I will always be grateful to you for letting me know that I can have a relationship like that, and...

I wish you a long and happy life with someone else.

Home - وطني

A letter sent home by an Egyptian soldier in WWII; in Arabic and English (scroll down for English). In the memory of my grandfather; the inspiring, self-made humanitarian who rose high in the UN but who was always a simple farmer at heart, and who has urged me to write in Arabic several times.

This is the first time for me to publish a post in Arabic, so I would appreciate any feedback. (You should try listening to "Take Me Home" By John Denver (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrEljMfXYo) while reading the English version; it compounds the effect. I know that sounds pretentious, but it really did for me).

******************************************************************************

عزيزتي الغالية،

لقد ارتحت كثيراً عندما تلقيت رسالتك الأخيرة، فإن أخبارك منقطعة  عني منذ فترةٍ طويلة، وانت تعلمين كم أقلق عندما أتخيل أن مكروه قد أصابك وأنا بعيد عنك وغير قادر على نجدتك. أمازلتي مريضة؟ اتمنى أن تكونين بخير عندما يصلك هذا الخطاب.

 في رسالتي الأخيرة أخبرتك انني قد وصلت إلى قاعدة الأسكندرية العسكرية، ولكن عندما تصلك هذه الرسالة سأكون بالقرب من الجبهة في طرابلس. لقد اضطررت أن أرسل هذا الخطاب من الأسكندرية، لأنني غالباً لن اتمكن من إرسال أي رسائل في الفترة القادمة... لا تقلقي، فإني لن اشارك في أي هجوم؛ فقد اعطاني الإنجليز مهام حراسية في نقطة حراسة في الطريق إلى تونس. أرجو أن تخبري عائلتي كي لا يقلقوا علي.

استيقظت اليوم مفتقداً وطني. في البداية كان إحساساً ملحاً، ضاغطاً على أعصابي، طالباً جزء من تفكيري. حاولت بشتى الطرق أن اشغل نفسي، ولكني فشلت في التغلب عليه، وظل يزداد ويزداد في إلحاحه حتى شغل عقلي وكياني بالكامل، وملأني بالحزن والكأبة حتى أردت أن استسلم لتلك المشاعر وانهار تماماً، منهمكاً في همومي... ولكن بالطبع، الجيش لا يتقبل مثل هذه الأعذار، فضغطت على نفسي وشرعت أكمل مهامي اليومية في الوحدة، مثل حفر الخنادق وتنظيف أرض ثكناتي وتنظيف بندقيتي... ولكن مثل هذه الأعمال تركت لي مطلق الحرية لأن أفكر في مشاغلي، وبالطبع بدأت أفكر في وطني. 

أين أبدأ؟ بالمساحات الخضراء الواسعة، حيث قد زرع الفلاحون محاصيلهم من قمح وشعير وقطن من شهورٌ مضت، وحيث هواء الخريف المنعش كفيل بشفاء أي داء قد يصيب المرء؟ كنت قد تعودت أن أتجول يومياً في هذه الحقول بعد صلاة الفجر وأنا عائدٌ إلى بيتي، ماراً بعيدان القمح التي تميل أكثر وأكثر إلى الذهبية ريثما ترتفع الشمس في عنان سماء زرقاء اللون خالية من السحب ومليئة بالأمل، مانحةً للدنيا ألواناً لا حصر لها، راسمةً إبتسامة على شفتي. كانت حياتي سهلة... لا أعتقد انني كان عندي أي هموم. كل ما كان علي فعله هو أن  أرعى محصولي المتواضع وعائلتي المتواضعة بالمثل.

 ولكن ليس هذا ما يحزنني.

لعلي افتقد والدي، وضحكاته المدوية وهو يخسر في لعبة الطاولة من عم ابراهيم جارنا. أكاد أتخيله الآن، جالس القرفصاء أمام المنزل على الحصيرة، وكوب الشاي الساخن المعسول بشدة بجانبه... قد حذرته كثيراً من إضافة هذا الكم الهائل من السكر إلى الشاي، خاصةً لأنه يعاني من مرض السكر، ولكنه دائماً كان يربت على بطنه ضاحكاً، مستبعداً مخاوفي، قائلاً "أنا صحتي زي الحصان". كان قد اعتاد أن يوقظني كل يوم لصلاة الفجر مزمجراً، ناظراً إلي بسخط، لظنه انني لن أصحو بمفردي إذا لم يوقظني هو. "حتروح النار من غيري" كانت جملته الشهيرة. اتمنى ألا اضطر أن أصحو بمفردي من غيره... اتمنى أن يكون بخير.

أو ربما افتقد أمي. أمي الحنونة الجميلة العطوفة. في صغري، عندما كان أبي يضربني لارتكابي أحد حماقات الأطفال، كانت تعنفه وتحتضني بشدة لتحميني، وتؤرجحني برفق حتى أتوقف عن البكاء، وتقبل آلامي وتطوقني في درع آمن يحميني من مصائب الحياه، حيث لا قذائف ولا رشاشات ولا قنابل ولا أشلاء قتلى ولا أصدقاء أموات. كانت نظرة واحدة إلى وجهها النضر المبتسم كل صباح كفيلةً بأن تجعل حياتي سعيدة... فقد وهبت حياتها لترعاني أنا واخوتي. اتمنى أن يرعوها بدورهم... سوف أعنف أحمد بشدة إذا عدت لأجدها تشتكي من أي شيء، فقد تم الخامسة عشرة من عمره، ولم يعد طفلاً... يعلم الله انني لم أكن لاتطوع في الجيش الإنجليزي إلا لرغبتي أن أخفف عنهم و اكسب بعض المال لأصرفه عليهم.

أو لعلي افتقد اخوتي... كان أحمد كسولاً طوال حياته، ولكني أظن أن هذا لأنه يعرف انني موجود وقادر على دعم العائلة بمفردي... و لكنني الآن ببعيد، وأظنه سيكون قادراً على المسؤولية.
على الجانب الأخر، يسعى محمد بكل ما يملك من جهد أن يساهم في دعم الأسرة، ولكنه ما زال صغير جداً على الأحمال الذي يتطلبها العمل في الحقل، فإنه غير قادر على حمل الفأس الثقيلة بمفرده، فضلاً عن رعونته الطبيعية، حتى أنه قد صار من أهم مهامي اليومية أن  أخبئ الأدوات منه حتى لا يؤذي نفسه. وبالطبع لا يمكن أن أنسى اخواتي الأصغر؛ فاطمة وهنية... يثبون من حجرة إلى حجرة في المنزل، يغنون بأصوات طفولية شبيهة بأصوات العصافير التي تنشر البهجة والسعادة في فجر يوم كئيب غيوم... حتى أبي الصارم ذو الضحكة النادرة ما يلبث أن يراهم حتى تنكشف أسنانه في إبتسامة عريضة، فيحملهم و يداعبهم ويدغدغهم... وهو أمر غريب جداً لأنه كان هينهرني عندما كنت أحاول احتضانه في طفولتي، صائحاً: "الحاجات دي للستات". لكني أحبه، فإنه رجل صالح.

و ليس ببعيد أن أكون لقريتي مفتقداً... للميدان الرئيسي للقرية، حيث يتجمع أهالي القرية كل ليلة أمام النار (بالرغم من أن عندنا ساعتين من الكهرباء كل مساء)، يتسامرون ويتبادلون القصص والطرائف، حيث يتجمع الشيوخ ويعطوا الدروس الدينية والمواعظ ويسردون علينا قصص السلف الصالح، حيث يعرف كل الناس بعضهم البعض ويتبادلون الأخبار والسؤال عن الأحوال، حيث ضيافةً لا حد لها وحيث يتسارع الناس ليتعازموا على الطعام والشراب، بالرغم من بساطته. أعرف تماماً أنهم سيعتنون بأسرتي تمام الإعتناء، ولكني ما زلت أظن أن أحمد قادر على ذلك بمفرده.

ولكن الألم الذي أحس به أكبر من كل هذا.

تفكرت كثيراً عسى أن اميز ما يحزنني، وأخيراً تمكنت من ذلك... فبالرغم من أهمية كل ما سبق في حياتي، تبقى هناك جانب مهم جداً، ربما كان أهم من كل ما قلته حتى الآن. فجأة أدركت انني كنت قد حجبت هذا الجزء عن تفكيري عامداً، فربما لم أكن قادراً على مواجهته حتى تلك اللحظة... فإذا به كيان قائم بذاته، يشع بضوء الشمس ساطعاً، مطالباً بانتباهي... ولكني عندما انتبهت إليه إختفى، تاركاً خلفه فراغ كبير في قلبي، لا يملؤه أي من الناس الذين قد ذكرت.

افتقدهم جميعاً، ولكن كان إشتياقي إليك مهيمناً على قلبي... فإن لا حرب ولا دمار ولا قنابل قادرة بأن تنسيني ضحكتك المرحة وابتسامتك البيضاء البراقة؛ أو شعرك الداكن البني اللامع، مجعدٌ برقة و عاكسٌ لشمس الظهيرة (بالرغم من ربطة رأسك التي أكرهها)؛ وعينيك البنية المبهرة، مليئةٌ بالسرور والتفاؤل والبراءة. عندما أنظر اليهما، أرى إمرأة جميلة لا تعرف مدى تأثيرها علي... أرى إمرأة أقوى بكثير مما تبدو، ومما تظن. أرى إمرأة عاقلة ورزينة، ولكني أرى أيضاً فتاة مليئة بالفرحة، ما زالت في ريعان طفولتها، مرحةً وسعيدة بدون أي متطلبات. أرى إمرأة ذات حياه بسيطة مثل حياتي، ولكنها قنوعة ولا تريد أكثر مما تملك. أرى إمرأة لا تربط سعادتها بالماديات وكماليات العصر الحديث، فهي سعيدة في جميع الأحوال؛ سعيدة وهي تأكل المشويات الغالية مثل الملوك، وسعيدة بنفس القدر وهي تأكل الفول وعيش الشعير المتبقي من عشاء الأمس. 

أرى إمرأة كل ما تريده من حياتها هو أنا.

وهي كل ما أريده من حياتي.

في تلك اللحظة، وعيت انني افتقد بيتي، لأني افتقدك أنت... فإن اليوم الذي يتوقف فيه قلبي عن النبض بحبك، سأكون فيه من الأموات.

فأنت حياتي، وبيتي، و وطني.

بكل حب،
بندق العسكري الفلاح من سنة 1942

****************************************************************************

Dearly beloved,

I was so relieved when I got your last letter; I had not heard from you in a long time and you know I cannot bear thinking that something has happened to you when I am away and unable to help. Please do not make me wait so long again... How is your cold? I know you were feeling a bit under the weather, but hopefully by the time this letter is delivered you will be feeling better. Last time I wrote you, I had just arrived at the military base in Alexandria, but by the time you read this I will have already arrived near the front-lines in Tripoli. I had to send this letter before I left the base because I might not have had a chance to send it later. Do not worry about me... I am not going to be part of any offensive. I will be stationed at a guard post on the road to Tunis, so I will not have any combat duties (as far as I know). Please let my family know so they would not worry.

I woke up today, missing home. At first it was like a insistent nagging at the back of my mind, but then it started bothering me, like a hangnail or a blister that I could not get rid of. No matter how hard I tried or how busy I tried to make myself, I could not shake off the feeling. It grew more and more in intensity until it was all I could do not to curl up in a ball, overwhelmed by melancholy and longing... But of course, such behavior is not tolerated in the corps. So I had to grit my teeth and busy myself with my daily duties; standing guard, digging ditches, sweeping my barracks and cleaning my gun. Such physical labor gave me a chance to think, and my mind naturally wandered off to home.

Where to start? The wide, open fields of wheat and cotton and barley, where the crisp, clean country air can cure a man from any disease? The long strolls I would take every morning after Salat Al-Fajr, whistling a merry tune and walking at a leisurely pace between the long wheat stalks, turning gradually golden as the rising sun cast its first rays of light upon them, lending color to a grey world and giving shape to an increasingly blue, cloudless sky. Looking back, I doubt I had a care in the world. Life was easy. I only had to tend to my moderate crop and care for my ageing parents. But when I thought about it, this is not what I was missing when I wrote this letter.

Maybe it was my father... his booming laughter as he played backgammon with our neighbor 'am Ibrahim, with his glass of strong sweet mint tea on the floor beside him where he sat cross-legged. I have told him a hundred times to stop adding so much sugar to his tea because of his diabetes, but he always gave a loud chuckle, slapped his belly and loudly proclaimed that he is "as strong as a horse". He would wake me up for Salat El-Fajr with a scowl every day because I almost always miss it if he does not wake me up, and he claims I would go to hell if he was not there to remind me. I hope he is always there to wake me up.

Or maybe it was mother. Matronly, caring, sweet mother. As a child, whenever my father would start hitting me because I had done something wrong, she would stop him and hug me protectively, rocking gently back and forth to calm me down until I stopped crying, kissing away my hurts and worries and enclosing me in a safe bubble where nothing can hurt me, where there are no mortar shells or machine gun fire or torn limbs or dead friends. One look at her kind smile in the morning, and my day is made. She only exists to care for me and my siblings... I hope they are taking good care of her. I will give Ahmed a good beating when I come back if he is not. He is 15; not a child anymore. God knows, the only reason why I volunteered in the British army is to support them.

Or is it my siblings? Lazy Ahmed, always reluctant to toil under the bright, warm sun. I know he was only being lazy because he knew I was always there to pick up the slack, but now there is no me and I know he will pull through. Mohammed, although younger, has always been more responsible... but a 10 year old boy would not know how to use a pick or would hurt himself trying. I always had to hide the tools from him because he was always eager to help but so clumsy that he almost always hurt himself. Then there are little Fatma and Hania, always skipping around cheerfully in the house, loudly singing in high-pitched childish voices and bringing joy wherever they go, like a pair of swallows on a particularly gaunt and foggy dawn. Even my stern, unyielding father would smile in spite of himself and lift them up and tickle them. That is saying a lot; when I tried to hug him as a child he would yell at me and say "hugging is for girls"... but his heart is in the right place.

Or maybe it is the village at night... the village square, where there is always a bonfire going even though we get electricity for two hours every night now. The village elders would sit around the fire and trade stories of times long gone; sheikhs giving religious advice and lessons; elderly women trading gossip. Everyone knows everyone else, and people always inquire after each others' health, genuinely concerned and wishing each other the best. Everyone invites everyone else over for tea and a humble meal; hospitality is unparalleled, and as sacred as their daily prayers... they would help support my family in my absence, I know... but Ahmed is man enough to do it on his own.

But the hurt in my heart was because of none of these things.

Once I had considered all these aspects of my existence, one part stood out. Arguably, the biggest part... glowing bright and warm inside my aching heart, expanding wider and wider, demanding my immediate attention. Once I started thinking about it, the glow was gone, to be replaced by a yawning, dark abyss of nothingness, swallowing up the memory of everyone I know, except one.

I miss everyone and everything else, but nothing holds a candle to you, my love. No war or death or bombs can make me forget your dazzlingly bright smile; your shiny, wavy ringlets of dark brown hair (covered by that hairnet I hate so much); and your cheerful, bright brown eyes; full of wonder and youth and possibilities. When I look into them I see a beautiful woman who is unaware of the effect she has on me. I see a woman who is a lot stronger than she looks, and stronger than she thinks she is. I see a mature woman, but I also see a happy, frolicking little girl, full of dreams and unspoiled innocence. I see a woman who is always happy; who has a simple life -like mine- but who would not trade it for the world. A woman who does not tie her happiness to personal belongings or materialistic wealth. A woman who would be just as happy having a kingly dinner of kabab and kofta as she would be eating leftover barley bread and beans. A woman who wants nothing but me.

And I want nothing but her.

And that's when I realized that I was homesick, but homesick for you most of all.

The day my heart stops beating for you, know that I will be amongst the dead. My heart is yours, now and forever, and if home is where the heart is, then you are;
my love,
my life,
and my home.

Sincerely,
Homesick 1942-Villager-Bondok


***********************************************************************

Of Love and Horses and Shit

Horseback riding is not easy. Even though I'm a fairly fit person in and in good physical condition, I have been unable to move for the past two days because of a wild gallop on one of the stupidest horses I've ever been on. Please allow me a completely unnecessary digression to explain why horseback riding is awesome, but really not for everyone.

When you watch a medieval war movie, you never spare the knights a second glance. Sure, they look impressive on their charging horses, armored heavily and slashing left and right with their swords, but that's all. They're just cavalry. Right? Wrong. I've always been intrigued by old societies such as feudal Europe and feudal Egypt (the Egyptian Mamluks, one of whom happened to be my great great grandfather). They always used to hold knights in great esteem, and I never understood why. Essentially they're just soldiers, and I didn't see why they held a rank higher than the other soldiers just because they were on horses.

That gallop made me understand.

Let me paint you a picture: the horse is nervous and tired, and thus unresponsive to your commands. When you pull on the reins it turns with you well enough, but getting it to stop is almost impossible even when you pull viciously on the reins, and if it stops it won't move until it's whipped by its handlers. You wouldn't have these problems with a properly trained horse, but in war all horses instinctively behave similarly. Anyway, the horse is not your only problem; the saddle is extremely uncomfortable and there are bits of iron jutting out on the seat, making you uncomfortable at best and in agony at worst when the horse is moving at a canter, because you keep getting jarred on those steel irregularities as you jump up and down in your seat due to the horse's pace. When it picks up the pace and starts going at full gallop, your only option as a guy who wants to retain his reproductive capabilities is to take a half-seat position where you half-stand up on your stirrups, gripping the horse with your knees and leaning forward so that you're not sitting anymore. But watch out, because when you do that, your lower back usually gets jarred against the steel back-support of the saddle, which will give you nasty bruises. After that, if you're riding a fast horse, it's all you can do to grab the saddle horn and hold on for dear life. The saddle horn is, of course, made of steel and hence raises blisters and bloodies your hand and makes your wrists go sore, but it sure beats falling over and getting trampled by the other horses at your rear. Not only that, but there's an uncomfortable knot in the stirrups that stabs you in your leg repeatedly and you can't remove your leg from the stirrups unless you're fond of painful deaths, and the stirrups themselves are made of steel and they bite painfully into your foot. Moreover, you're forced to match the pace of all the other riders so you don't lag behind, and all the other riders seem to have comfortable saddles as opposed to the medieval torture device you happen to be sitting on, so they gallop at full speed, heedless of your pain and suffering.

Forty five minutes of this made me tired as hell. The effort of sitting in an upright position against the horse's frantic acceleration makes your back muscles scream for mercy, and your wrists, and your biceps, and especially your legs because you're doing a half-stand. The physical toll is considerable; all your muscles are sore, you're walking bow-legged, you're bruised all over and all you want to do is sleep. Imagine doing all of this for hours, while also heavily armored in unyielding steel armor which can cook you alive under a summer noon sun, while also swinging a heavy steel sword and being generally expected to land killing blows every now and then. I get it now, and I have a lot more respect for knights than I used to.

All of this just to say that I'm still sore all over, even though that was two days ago. The gallop was more exhausting than a whole week at the gym; my body seems to say.

But for some reason, as I sit here in the least uncomfortable position I can manage, I started thinking of cheesy stuff. Maybe because I've just watched a particularly cheesy episode of The Office, or because cheese is my default setting. Regardless, it seems to me that -much like horseback riding- people seem to have forgotten how love works. You have TV shows and movies romanticizing the giant gestures such as the cliched racing-to-the-airport-to-confess-undying-love. I'm not going to claim that the value of such gestures is to be completely discounted, but I don't think this is what love is really about.

It's natural to want to be with the person you love, but the feeling is not always mutual. Sometimes the other person does not feel the same way, and you're left with an uncomfortable choice; either to move on or to get even more invested in trying to get them to feel the same way. What I believe is that the latter is childish. Yes, we're not robots and it's perfectly normal for a person to at least try, but usually when it fails we try again, and again, and again, to the point where it's more an obsession than actual feelings. People usually start asking themselves "how do I get her/him to love me" instead of asking important questions, like "how do I make myself a better person and maybe one day they'll see it too". People completely disregard their pride and they get more and more invested to the point where they start resenting themselves for it later when they move on.

Like I said, I feel like this a childish approach to love; the love of a child for a toy he/she just has to have. Possession is not love. I don't like that saying that goes "if you love her let her go, if she never comes back then she was never yours to begin with" because it still implies that you're waiting for her to come back. That, again, is not love. Maybe she's happier when she's not with you... if you really love her, you'd rather she stays happy away from you than than be miserable with you. I know it sounds too holier than thou, and I won't claim to be so selfless myself, but I think it's how everyone should at least try to feel; it's simply the most selfless way to love someone.

Ask yourself this: if there was a way to help someone you love, which would be more important to you; that you help them, or that they know about it? More often than not, the honest answer is "that they know about it", because we seek their approval and we want them to know that we cared enough to help. Think of all the people you think you love, and -in my opinion- only the people where you can honestly answer "that you help them" are truly important to you. Getting someone a job interview without them knowing because they'd be too proud to accept your help if they knew; that's true love. Donating blood to someone without them knowing; that's true love. Even something as simple as wishing that a girl/guy you're in love with is happy -even if it's with someone else- counts for a lot, because they wouldn't know about it and that's what I think is what matters.

For years as a child, I thought my grandma was unbeatable at playing cards because that's what my dad used to say. She used to beat me all the time, and I used to stomp my feet and cry and sulk and to not want to play with her. As the years went by and I got older, and better at playing cards, I started beating her more often and I started wondering why I'd always thought she was so formidable... until one day, when I was spectating a game between her and my dad. He'd always lost to her, and I didn't understand why because when I played him he used to wipe the floor with me. It was only when I looked at his cards and saw him deliberately using the wrong cards and missing out on chances that I understood that he was letting her win, and of course she had no idea. This reputation that she was unbeatable was carefully cultivated just to make her feel adept at something. All he cared about was that she laughed and felt good when she beat him, and that's all that mattered to him.

That, in a nutshell, is what I think love is.

The greatest deeds in love go unrewarded.

Real Beauty

She is so much more than just beautiful.

Our notion of beauty derives from standing out. In any given society, in any given country, most people have a certain look, derived from its people's gene pool -this theory obviously excludes largely cosmopolitan populations such as the populations of New York or Dubai or London. Usually each country has certain defining genetic characteristics regarding height, build, eye color, hair color, etc. We usually view a person as beautiful or attractive when they stand out from the group. Again, this is not always the case. This is not to claim that ONLY people who look different are attractive, and other people can suck it. It is just an observation... for example, someone with a tan isn't looked at twice in Argentina, while in Norway they would be considered very attractive. That doesn't mean that all white people living in Norway are considered ugly scum unfit for love and compassion, but odds are that a tanned person is more likely to be attractive to Norwegians than just another white Norwegian. Perhaps a radical view, but one which I've come to notice in most countries I have visited. Similarly, in most of the Arab world, being white is usually synonymous with being beautiful, due to the fact that being white is not very common.

Due to that unfortunate fact, some Egyptians would not call her beautiful. She's cute, certainly (they would say) but she looks so "normal". Ordinary. One of a million- or rather, one of 90 million. Since it would take a very long time to track down each idiot who says that and punch them, I'm going to do it here in writing instead. You see, you ignorant, pathetic, equally-tanned, hypocritical excuses for Egyptian males (whose taste I share, shamefully), it takes much more than a tan to make a girl "ordinary". We live in Egypt, we're all tanned. If you don't get tanned, you die of skin cancer; it's an evolutionary mechanism. If anything, from a Darwinian point of view, your going for a white girl decreases your offsprings' chances of survival and hence -from a purely evolutionary standpoint- natural selection is gonna have some fun with you and yours.

I can't expect you to see beyond your veil of koshary-fuelled ignorance and notice how beautiful her eyes are. No, they don't have to be wide blue eyes. They're almond shaped  brown eyes, juuuuuust  the right shade to make you crave something chocolaty. Highly intelligent eyes, which seem to have the ability to figure you out and see right through you within five minutes of meeting you. I can't expect you to appreciate how playfully seductive she is when she plays around with her ringlets of wavy, brown hair, twirling it further and further into tighter curls that spring bouncily back to their original artful tumble; unpretentious and fun and low-maintenance while still managing to look elegant. I can't expect you to see how even her "common" tanned, dark skin is unblemished, smooth and soft as velvet. But most of all, I can't expect you to notice her smile, o clueless unworthy Egyptian male idiot. When she smiles, her whole face smiles. You can tell, because she gets that twinkle in her eyes and her right cheek twitches slightly as her lips part to show a pristine set of gleaming, perfect teeth -in stark contrast to her dark complexion- complimenting the glint in her eyes and compounding the effect to make you inwardly moan because any time now, she is going to stop smiling and you will fall back in the terrible, dark abyss where you dwelled before she started smiling.

But as I said before, she is so much more than just beautiful. And far from being "unremarkable", she is -no matter how you look at it- extraordinary.

When I look at her, I see a burning passion for what she does. In her eyes, I see more than pretty, smiling, intelligent eyes; I see a fiery will and determination burning as bright as any star, announcing to the world that "I am here and I am going to succeed". I see a constant need for self-improvement. I see a strong, assertive character that manifests itself in a nonthreatening way that instead of antagonizes other assertive personalities, manages to win them over to her side willingly, where they are glad to cooperate as peers and equals. I see a very helpful person who will go to extreme lengths to lend a hand to whoever needs it, but still makes sure not to be taken for granted. I see a girl with all the tools to succeed in life, who does whatever it takes to get things done, yet still manages to make it look effortless and laugh about it. I see an intellect that is so obviously a match for my own, which in all modesty is not a common occurrence, yet she never comes across as arrogant... and while we're at it, her laugh is extremely contagious and her sense of humor is so well-developed that I can honestly say that she is one of literally four girls I know who can actually make me laugh.

Every time I see her, she grows more and more beautiful in my eyes. And every time, my respect for her grows. She is not one of 90 million Egyptians- she is one IN 90 million Egyptians.

Conventional beauty will fade, but what she has is infinitely more enduring.

So you see, my visually (and mentally) impaired Egyptian friend, beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

*********************************************************************

I know several girls who are going to read this post and think it's about them, and I find it very ironic that you're probably not gonna read it. But maybe one day I'll show it to you, and you'll know I meant every word I said.

22/10/2014 Edit: No, I will never show you this post now. For both our sakes.

Bondok's View of Life in Your 20s

Please note that this is simply my point of view, which you have the right to agree or disagree with.

Right off the bat, I'm gonna go ahead and shoot the elephant in the room up its massive butthole with a shotgun that shoots little shotguns;

I may be biased.

The fact that I am currently not hopelessly and irrevocably in love with anyone -anyone who isn't fictional, that is- might slightly cloud my judgement. Maybe this article would go a lot differently if I were one of the lucky ones who met their soul mates on a rainy day when they offered to share their umbrella or at a restaurant when they were both stood up by their blind dates or on the titanic when it sank and there was only one plank left floating and the bitch claimed it all for her fat, selfish ass- I'm getting sidetracked. My point is, the hopeless romantic in me admits that there maybe another valid point of view, which I would only agree with if I were in a loving, committed relationship with a girl I couldn't wait to spend the rest of my life with. But I'm not, so here goes.

I personally know several people who got married. I personally know even more people who are currently engaged. It's a person's basic right, they're quite within their rights to do it. I wish them all the happiness in the world, and I hope they enjoy the wild journey they're about to embark upon, and I'd really like to ask them out for dinner some time so they can give me tips on how to handle this pesky cardiac arrest habit I seem to have developed in response to whenever any girl starts getting too commitmenty with me. However, this is where it ends. I cannot see myself in their shoes, and even if I'd already met the girl I knew I wanted to marry, I doubt I'd be getting chained down at this point in my life.

What I've unfortunately felt recently is that the concept of marriage has devolved into some kind of competition. That's not to say that all people who get married do it to win some game, but it's definitely embedded into the psychology of 8 out of every 10 girls I know that she needs to draw the winning lottery ticket as quickly as possible before some imaginary deadline. I happen to personally know several examples of such girls, and I've had many pants-shittingly terrifying experiences with a couple of them, without going into too much detail. They all seemed to want to force a connection between us -a connection that wasn't there- just to meet some imaginary obligation only they could feel. 

In no time at all, the concept of marriage has changed from a proclamation of mutual love to the entire world to an opportunity to change your relationship status on Facebook and post some wedding photos with annoying captions like "my one and only, forever together <3" to try and make as many people as possible feel lonely and unfulfilled.

Speaking as a member of your target audience, I have to say I'm unimpressed. The fact that you're happily in love should matter only to you, not to your entire Facebook entourage. News flash: the pictures you share either induce indifference, jealousy, depression or "hide from newsfeed". If you were truly in love, you would generally not feel the need to obsessively share it on every social media outlet you have access to. If, on the other hand, you are only settling for the best option you currently have, then I feel sorry for you and go ahead and share the pictures so you can blunt the pain of the mistake you're going to have to spend the rest of your life dealing with. You'll have to forgive my bluntness, but that is exactly what people seem to forget about marriage.

If you're secure in your knowledge that you've picked the right person, I congratulate you. If you still haven't picked, then here are some warnings I hope you'll bear in mind:

MARRIAGE IS FINAL.

THERE IS NO GOING BACK.

YOUR LIFE AS YOU KNOW IT IS OVER.

IT'S NOT ABOUT TAKING SOME SELFIES AND MAKING BABIES "BECAUSE HOW HARD COULD IT BE"?

Imagine, if you will, going to buy a pizza. You go to your favorite Italian pizza place and order a Quattro Formaggi pizza. The manager -who is running a terrible business model, admittedly- asks you to make sure your decision is final, because he will only ever serve you Quattro Formaggi pizzas from then on. One could argue that you could go to a different pizza place, but then one could get the fuck out of my narrative because this is MY tortured metaphor. Anyway, even a decision as trivial as this one -if you think about it- is not easy to make. What if I crave a pepperoni pizza? What if I get tired of blue cheese? Would I really like to spend the rest of my life eating THIS PIZZA, and nothing else? Wouldn't I eventually swear off pizza altogether?

The point is that a person's point of view changes a lot between the ages of 19 to 25... what was acceptable to you a year ago could make you roll your eyes or have a fit today. We are in a phase when our brains are maturing and we are deciding who we are, what we want in life and who we want to share it with. Maybe you hate blue cheese today but then a couple of months from now you'll start liking it. God knows, this exact thing happened to me this year. I'm sure you're not here to explore my adventures with blue cheese, but it's relevant: nothing is certain in this age range because we ourselves are ever-changing. Our tastes change, our wants change, our needs change. To choose a life partner at this age would be like getting a tattoo of a burger on your forehead because it seemed like a good idea at the time, when you were a (hungry and retarded) teenager, except that you're stuck with it for the rest of your life... unless you undergo a very painful and expensive procedure; divorce, in this metaphor.

Where is the logic in getting married before you know what you want in life? In my case, for example, I am currently working in a field that is as far removed from my college major as it gets. I'm at an uncertain stage in my career, and am unsure if I want to continue down that path or change my career altogether. I'm unsure where I'll live; maybe in Egypt, maybe in Europe, why not the Gulf, possibly the States. With so many variables, I would be insane to make such a decision now, when even my livelihood can still be called into question. How could I commit to supporting a family when I'm not even fully capable of supporting myself yet?

And you know what? I like that I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I like that there is no user's guide that I should follow. I like that I can do anything I want because I'm in my 20s. Now is the time to explore all the viable options, and make an affordable mistake or two. If not now, when?!

Marriage is responsibility, marriage is saying goodbye to your nonchalant spontaneity and independence. Overnight, you've suddenly forfeited your financial freedom and your control over your own life, and all of a sudden every decision you make affects two people, and it only gets harder from there if you decide to have kids.

Compare that suffocating reality to the life of a young adult bachelor, whose only dilemma is what to try next; where to live next; what to do next. No strings attached, no one to answer to. If you should decide to pack up and move to Europe tomorrow, who's stopping you? If you were to decide to go backpacking through East Asia (Europe is too mainstream), who would you have to convince? No one. You only answer to you, and that is priceless. At least to me. Over the past 22 years, I've visited 16 countries and I don't intend to stop there. In fact, the more I travel, the more I ache for more travel (maybe my blog's background picture should have given that away). I love getting familiar with foreign culture and history. Most importantly, I love meeting new people abroad, and that is never going to change for me. I live in a permanent state of wanderlust, and even though I was in Greece three weeks ago, I'd jump on a plane tomorrow and go anywhere else if I could take a few days off work. The day I stop travelling is the day I die, and it's something I've learned about myself because I've allowed myself to explore rather than got chained down at a needlessly young age.

Again, if you already know who you want to marry, I'm not convincing you to break up with them... but give yourself some breathing space! If you both know you're in love and getting married, why do you have to do it now? If you have to prove your intentions, then it feels more like a financial transaction than a marriage. Which I suppose is a huge part of marriage anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I'm the most hopelessly romantic guy in the world. My endless quest to find my "the one" often ends up in my being compared to Ted from How I Met Your Mother. I want the dog and the white picket fence more than most people who actually do have them. But I'm not gonna settle for any girl, she has to be perfect for me and we have to be in love. And I firmly believe that there is a time and place. The time is not until I'm at least 25. And the place is God knows where, because I'm in my twenties. The sky is the limit, and I'm gonna milk that feeling for all it's worth.

And there you have it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I will always be against picking out baby names when you should be exploring the world... and more importantly, yourself.

Thank You

*This is a pointed letter, continue at your own risk. Or maybe it's a work of fiction. Meh, your call.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you.
This is what I realized I hadn't said to you yet.

***

I'm a very passionate person, and anyone who knows me well could probably roll their eyes and provide you with about five stories about that, off the top of their heads and without batting an eyelash. It's true, with girls I'm either indifferent about them or head over heels for them. Not that I show it, mind you, but it's still there. If a girl gets under my skin, she lives there like a parasite leeching off my thoughts and emotional capacity for a life span about as long as this tortured metaphor's. Not only that, but I'm extremely unpredictable. It can take me days to get over a girl who locked eyes with me from across a busy room, hours to get over a girlfriend, months to get over a girl I met for three days.

In other words, you.

Without stressing the point too much, I've only ever been in love once and it didn't end very well. And when I say it didn't end very well, I mean it in the same sense that playing the bagpipes to soothe a raging grizzly bear wouldn't end very well. Long story short, eventually I realized that I hadn't felt that way about any other girl because I'd put up too many defenses and completely given up on the idea of trusting a girl enough to allow myself to like her. Yeah yeah, mushy mushy stuff, blah de blah de blah.

My point being that I was completely unprepared to deal with how you made me feel for the very short period of time that we've known each other for. Not that I felt it immediately, mind you. At first, as always, I was indifferent. You were just someone I had to deal with. It didn't take long to warm up to you, but I'm a friendly guy so I put it down to that and left it there. As time went on, I frequently caught myself looking at you without quite knowing why I was doing it... maybe I was bored and your face was the most pleasant thing around to look at -which it was- but it doesn't make sense because I had to crane my neck to look at you. When we talked, I was actually listening and not secretly thinking about chocolate cake. Whenever we playfully touched, it didn't feel forced. I didn't understand why it bothered me when you were being flirty with other guys.

 Bit by bit, as I started coming out of my shell, I started appreciating how beautiful you are and how there seems to be a haze around you, hiding the immediate universe around your face, overshadowing your surroundings as they fade into complete insignificance beside your radiant smile. Suddenly I'm not just hanging out with you because meh there's nothing good on television -which is my usual motivation to do stuff- but because I actively seek you out because I actually want to be around you. Subtly, without even knowing it, I crossed the border from indifferent to smitten. And I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you felt the same way.

And just like that, the real world stepped in and it was all over.

I had to take a 37 hour trip back home, which was every bit as exhausting as it sounds- even more so. I didn't have any money because I'd lost my wallet and I'd vowed not to ask my dad for any extra cash. Well, I had a $100 bill I didn't want to break because I wanted to give it back to dad because it was his money (I'd promised myself I'd pay for the trip on my own) and a couple of dollars and a pocketful of cents. I spent 6 hours on the floor at JFK, hungry and sick, surviving on tap water and the stale popcorn and candy bars I bought for my $3.89 (I still remember the number).

But I digress.

You'd left such an impression on me that even as I sat there, coughing my head off and eating cheap popcorn, I had to take out my tablet and start jotting down notes about how I was feeling. I was afraid I would forget the feeling and I wanted to put it down in words as soon as I could. Before I knew it, I was on the flight, and it was all I could do to wait  until I got to Amsterdam to... party, you ask? Get some well-deserved rest from my 37 hour-long journey? Hang out with my best friend who I hardly ever see?

All I wanted to do was get to his house so I could sit down and write that blogpost I wrote a few months ago.

Jet-lagged, hungry, penniless, homeless, sleepy, sick and in fucking Amsterdam, and all I could think of during my 12 hour transit was you and how I couldn't even wait to get back home to write down what I was feeling because I was afraid words would fail me if I waited. I wanted to save that feeling; immortalize it... preserve it. If I could, I would have framed that feeling and hung it up on my bedroom wall, because it was nothing short of a miracle.

This is what I'll always be grateful to you for. I thought I'd never feel that way about anyone else, and you proved me wrong. You proved that I could have chemistry with a girl and like her and be a smitten idiot. You'll always be that girl to me; the girl I wish I could have been with if circumstances had been different. The girl who showed me that there is still a chance for a broken someone like me to -in the everlasting words of Joey Tribbiani- "grab a spoon". You gave me the most valuable gift you could have given me.

You gave me hope.

Which is why you'll always be special to me, and why I will always wonder what could have been.

Cloudy with a Chance of Politics

I woke up.

Let me explain why that's weird.

I am not exactly what you'd call a lucky person. I was born during the Egyptian revolution of 1919 against the British crown. And when I say during, I of course mean while it was happening, but I also mean where it was happening.

The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 is widely accredited for being the first revolution in Egyptian history with active female participation, and it just so happened that my 8-month pregnant mother, God bless her soul - in all her infinite wisdom- decided to participate. Apparently, giving birth to a cumulative litter of 12 children over a very long and productive life of almost 30 years makes a woman... battle-hardened, for lack of a better word.

 At any rate, my mother was marching all over the place, as only a pregnant woman can, lashing out at people with her ample uterus and presumably my head within (which would account for many of my decisions in later life). Her entourage of similarly battle-hardened friends/midwives helped -more like pushed, shoved, pulled and towed- her forward, clearing a wide circle of emptiness around her, much like a penicillin pill would do in a petri dish of E. Coli bacteria; give a person too many tastes of your elbow/knee/my head within a huge uterus, and they would eventually learn to steer clear of the raging pregnant lady and her bodyguards. As if people really need to be warned against that.

It was in that charmingly soothing atmosphere that my mother had her contraction. Just one. One could just as easily cough up a gob of phlegm as it was for her to give birth to me. While standing up. One of the midwives tried to catch me before I hit the ground, but had no such luck. Presumably holding true to the five second rule, she picked me up anyway and wiped me on her galabeyya (traditional Egyptian clothes). There was also the small matter of the umbilical cord, which the midwife was kind enough to bite off. My mother then reportedly pushed ahead through the demonstration to get a larger share of the gunfire, and was rewarded by about 7 poor bullets which probably ricocheted off her balls of steel because she survived and lived to the ripe old age of 90.

What happened to me, you ask? One of the midwives stuck me in her bosom for safe-keeping.

Flash forward 23 years, and the year is 1942. Where am I? You guessed it!

In Alamein, recruited by the British Army to fight in the North Africa campaign, against Rommel, the Desert Fox.

The story of how I got recruited is quite amusing; was I drunk when I applied? No. Was it to pay off a debt? No. Was it to support my wife and 59 children? Also no. My illiterate mother, God bless her soul, got hoodwinked by a desperate British recruitment officer into signing me up, thinking it's a Welfare form; my mother basically fell victim to the world's first Nigerian Prince scam. Well, actually I'm the one who fell victim for it, but that's neither here nor there.

So the 13th of July, 1942 found me in a ditch in Alamein, preparing for a German Panzer offensive. In case you're historically illiterate, the Germans' ace in the hole in World War II were their tanks, and they employed them in Blitzkreig tactics to overwhelmingly efficient results. Efficient for the Germans. Bad for us.

Suddenly, a hand grenade took care of my entire squad, except me because I was conveniently curled in the fetal position behind a concrete wall and singing lullabies to soothe myself. One would think that makes me lucky. One would be wrong because I was then captured by the Germans as I tried to explain that I was only there because my illiterate mother signed me up and I'm really quite a nice guy once you get to know me and would you please stop pulling me so hard.

Not being a stranger to all the stories of what Germans do to their non-Aryan prisoners, I decided to die heroically with a gun in my hand and I snatched one from the soldier who was dragging me along. Just as I prepared to cap a mother fucker, I realized that he was smiling and jabbering away in incomprehensible German. I pulled the trigger, and the pathetic metallic click that followed was almost as comic as the sound a balloon makes as it lets the air out when it's untied.

Just as they were preparing to put me down like a particularly amusing rabid dog who's been chasing his tail for 3 days, I got caught in the middle of a surprise British counter attack and was instead captured by the British, who thought I'd turned traitor because I had a gun and yet failed to cap a mother fucker. So I was then captured by my own army and put to questioning. The only thing that saved my unlucky ass was that they realized the gun was empty before they started the questioning, and that I must have either fired it or run out of ammo. I was dishonorably discharged not long after -which was a way of cheating me of my pay, I suppose- when the North African campaign was over and they rightfully realized that I was useless.

Who should happen to hire me now as a palace guard? Why, King Farouk, of course!

Perhaps thinking that a WWII veteran battalion of palace guards would be more intimidating than 3am 3abdo (the palace doorman), the king then hired all the Egyptian survivors of the Battle of Alamein and posted them in strategic locations around his palaces. I was posted on the doors of Kasr 3abdeen on the 23rd of July 1956. Perhaps that date rings a bell. Perhaps it rings a dozen bells. Perhaps it drives a battalion of tanks towards Kasr 3abdeen, because that's exactly what happened next. You might be surprised to know that staring down the barrel of a hostile tank is not as spiritually fulfilling as we've been led to believe.

The king, being a truly patriotic man (no sarcasm here), surrendered the palace and refused help from the British, famously saying that he would much rather not be king of Egypt than let a single drop of Egyptian blood be spilled. Which was noble and heroic for him, but not so much for me because the next thing I knew was being hit on the head with the butt of a soldier's rifle who seemed to have been sore at his being cheated of his daily quota of Egyptian blood and decided to take it out on me.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I woke up and I wasn't in the palace, or in a prison, or in 1956.

You see, I seem to recall that electricity was invented in 1956.
But I woke up in a dark, candle-lit room with no other source of light whatsoever.
Wow, I must be in the middle ages.

There was an old man sitting by my hospital bed. He didn't seem to know me; he was just there because he was napping and the hospital had no other places for him to sit. I shrugged. Egyptian hospitals will always be the same.

After a few minutes of hoarse yelling, the old man stirred at the cacophony I was making. After a few more minutes of hoarse yelling, he still had no idea what I was saying. I pointed at a calendar on the wall and shrugged, meaning "what day is it?". He said "Wednesday". I pointed at it again. He said Wednesday again.

This went on for a while.

Eventually, he understood me, and to my eternal surprise he said "Wednesday, the 20th of August, 2014". I found a notepad on my nightstand, and I scribbled "how come we don't have electricity anymore?". Thankfully he was literate, and he replied "May God protect our Sissi". I asked why the hospital was so busy. he said "May God protect our Sissi". I asked who Sissi was, he replied "SHHHHHHHH, Do you want to get us both killed?". He then whispered (yelled at the top of his lungs, but he didn't know that) that he's our president. I asked him if we were free of the British, and he said "May God protect our Sissi, he protected us from the Muslim Brotherhood". The man was brainwashed cleaner than a microwaved hard disk. I asked if the hungry were fed and if the unemployment rates were down. He gave the same reply and added that he was hungry and unemployed but as long as Sissi is his lord and savior he shalt be fine. Since Sissi seemed to be such an impressive leader, I asked him the only question to come to a pan-Arab's brain from 1956;
I asked him if Palestine was liberated yet, and the old man laughed so hard he died in his chair. Literally.
I then yelled for help, and the man's family thought I'd killed him and they stabbed me. But I died happily.

You wanna know why? For one thing, it's because it was probably a nightmare and that I would probably wake up again in prosperous, classy and wealthy 1950s Egypt... but also because even the unluckiest wretch who lived in presumably the darkest era of Egyptian history couldn't stand to see 2014, Sissi's Egypt.

May God protect him, of course.

The "Arab" World

It happens every four years, like clock work.

Israel starts some massive operation in Gaza and the world collectively turns its back and studies the ceiling intently while whistling a merry tune.

You wanna hear a joke? Arabs.

Being "Arab" is currently nothing more than an ethnicity. Once, the word Arab entailed a unity; a sense of camaraderie and empathy. We were never exactly a cohesive unit, but we came through for each other. In 1967 and 1973, when the going got tough, we stuck together. When it came to war, Egypt and Syria were financially supported by Saudi Arabia and the Arab world enforced the famous oil embargo. Countries as far away from Israel as Libya, Algeria and even Morocco sent what help they could. Gaza was basically part of Egypt, and any aggression there was unthinkable.

Once.

What do we have to show for it today? A fascist government in Egypt which closed the border crossings to Gaza; the only relief Gaza is ever going to get? A Saudi monarchy so engrossed in its financial gains that it doesn't even consider using its considerable political weight to oppose the Israeli genocide in Gaza? A war-torn Syria which is every bit as devastated as Gaza? I would mention Iraq if it bore any semblance to a country, and not a US oil faucet.

Keep your oil money, Saudi Arabia, and your non-existent, begrudged aid, Egypt. But their blood is on your hands.

Let's all "condemn" the actions on social media and share the pictures on Facebook, idiotically thinking that it makes any sort of difference. Guess what? That blood-boiling Facebook status you spent an hour writing? It's not gonna feed a displaced, starving family in Gaza or Syria. That picture you shared? It's not gonna shoot down that Israeli jet which is raining fire and death upon women and children and unarmed men... and neither will this blog post. Let's all bask in the glow of our ignorance and indifference, conveniently choosing to ignore that our governments are soul-less, heartless parasites leeching off our hard work and using our money to line their pockets and shrugging off their pleas for help. And let's not forget the US government; the champions of democracy and human rights. Let's spend $5 billion a year to buy top notch military equipment for Israel to bomb women and children and Egypt to crush protesters and gun down political activists.

When the Egyptian media phrases it like "Israel is targeting "terrorists"  in Gaza", you know that the cause is well and truly lost. When the brainwashed masses lack even the slightest degree of passive empathy for Palestinians and claim that "Hamas the terrorist organization" had it coming, you back away slowly and completely disassociate yourself from this joke of a country and look for some other part of the world where you can live without having blood on your hands from just being a part of this charade.

When Egypt, once the shield of the Arab world, becomes an accessory to the Israeli crimes in Gaza by cutting off humanitarian aid and relief, you lose the last dregs of nationalism and loyalty you had left over from the 2011 revolution when you actually let yourself believe that things were ever going to change. I'm done, well and truly done. I wash my hands of Egypt and the Arab world under the current conditions.

May God have mercy on Gaza... that's the only mercy they're ever going to get.

Leadfoot Syndrome

As he did so often when he faced trouble or uncertainty in his life, he took it out on his gas pedal again. His friends called him "Leadfoot", because... well, it's self-explanatory, really.
***********************************************************

His best friend had woken him up earlier that day with promises that he was throwing the party of the year at his place, the epic chance to "score drunk chicks" as he eloquently put it. Try as he might to convince him that he just wasn't interested, in the matter of hours his friend went from persistent to insistent to FUCK-YOU-YOU'RE-COMING-OVER-THIS-INSTANT ("Rhyming is fun", He thought). His friend's philosophy was to hook up with random girls whenever in a dark place in one's life. Or in a good place. Or any place, really... but mostly the dark place thing. Pretty? Score. Drunk? Why not. Fat? Meh, OK. Mustache? Turn off the lights. Didn't matter where, didn't matter when, and most importantly, didn't matter who. Which is all well and good when you're the emotionally crippled bag of commitment issues that his friend was (he thought, with love), but he found that he didn't happen to share that particular philosophy. He took a moment to revel in the utter orgy of madness that was his friend's life, but for some reason the images came up hazy, almost as if his brain was censoring the thoughts on purpose because they would be written in blog form later and it didn't want them to be too explicit. Crazy, right?

He had tried to communicate to his friend that he loved someone and that random hook-ups wouldn't cut it for him anymore, but he would have none of it. Trying to convince him was like trying to logic a dog out of chasing its tail own tail... except his friend usually chased tail in general, not specifically his own. He mentally laughed at his own joke, and then acknowledged the fact that shit like that would probably get him killed one day with a hammer. He was OK with it.

Faced with the immovable wall of sheer nagging that was his friend, he got in his car and drove over. First sign of trouble was that there wasn't a single parking spot left when he got there, and it was only 9 PM. Using his carefully-honed detective skills, he concluded from the fresh tire-tracks that most of the cars were there for the party and that they'd only just arrived. He was halfway up the stairs, with a smug smile on his face, when he heard his friend screaming "wrong building, you idiot" from -you guessed it- another building, presumably the right one.

Up he went, and was greeted at the door by his friend and a girl, doubtless his first hook-up of the night. He was quickly reminded why he hated parties, as he walked inside.

First of all, the music. It wasn't like he was 50 or anything, but why did it have to be so LOUD? Then he answered himself; because it eliminated the need for small talk. People were simply there to drink, dance and have a good time without feeling the need to engage in irrelevant, unnecessary niceties such as saying "hi" or asking about each other's hobbies, or I don't know, getting to know each others' names. "What is this, the 40s?", the whole atmosphere seemed to ask itself derisively in response, snorting and choking on its beer while grinding with a girl whose face it hadn't even seen yet.

Mostly communicating by improvised sign language, his friend ushered him to a couch where two very hot girls started flirting with him... and by flirting, I mean the naughty kind that makes babies. He politely said thanks but no thanks, which they responded to by smiling and nodding their heads vigorously and doing what they'd been doing anyway. He realized that they probably hadn't heard him because he hadn't even heard himself, so he pointed at his crotch, shook his head and got up. He could see how heart-broken they were, until they started making out two seconds later. Oh, well. It felt nice that they'd obviously been into him, but in all fairness he was only 70% sure that his friend hadn't paid them to.

As the night progressed, he realized that the unavailable vibe he was giving off was an unbelievable chick-magnet. Five more girls had tried to (is "jump his bones" an appropriate term?) and two even gave him their phone numbers so he could call them later. Irresistible Adonis though he narcissistically knew he was, rejecting ten girls in one night had already inflated his ego enough... In some weird way, his friend had helped. But he was no closer to getting over the girl he loved, and he wasn't in the mood to reject ten more girls. Well, maybe just two more. OK, now he had to go. He looked for his friend, who was nowhere to be found, so he decided to call it a night anyway and left early.

By early, I meant 2 am. Time had passed faster than he believed possible.

Even though he hadn't drunk at all, it was very hard to stay awake at that hour without cranking up the music in his car. Comfortably Numb often calmed him down, but that was the opposite of what he wanted... so, he put on Will Pharrel's "Happy". Yeah, he thought it was way overrated and mainstream too, but it made him want to dance, so sue him. Anyway, the minute he started driving, his thoughts turned to her again. As if in response, he slammed his foot on the gas pedal.

As he did so often when he faced trouble or uncertainty in his life, he took it out on his gas pedal again. His friends called him "Leadfoot", because... well, it's self-explanatory, really. He didn't understand why high speed made him feel better. Maybe he liked almost dying several times a day... or maybe in some weird way, speed made him outrun his doubts and feelings. And what feelings they were...
He had unresolved issues with his ex; he was having almost daily fights with his father; his boss had given him ANOTHER RAISE (comic relief interjection) and most importantly, he was hopelessly in love with a girl who probably felt the same way but was completely wrong for him and he didn't know how to deal with it.

As if that weren't enough, he crashed into a lamp post.

 He staggered out of the car, battered and bloody, only to be hit by another car. He would have laughed at the comic death he was facing, but it hurt too much to breathe so he settled for a smile... because his last thought was of her... And because "Happy" was still playing in his car, comically mocking his last dying breath.

I know, huge bummer...

So anyway, what's up with you?

Maryam

I can't believe I'm writing this, but this is long overdue. I don't know where you are, what you're doing or who you're with. I'm not even sure you're alive... but for the sake of my own sanity, I think it's time I had this conversation with you, even if it's only in my head (and on my blog) and you will probably never read it.

You were my exact definition of beautiful; blue-green eyes depending on the lighting, a thick mane of soft brown hair that cascaded elegantly down your back (with that stupid ash-blonde streak you had as a memento from when you were trying to go blonde); a neck so long and perfect it might as well have been sculpted from porcelain; lustrous red, full-sized lips and a smile that could get a man to chew off his right hand just to see it; and soft round cheeks that made you look deceptively innocent.

I was young and stupid, and like a fly that keeps bumping into a lit lamp because of the pretty light, eventually I got burned. There were huge red flags everywhere, and I think you yourself tried to warn me, but I was blind to the signs. We were never meant to be together and you were too wild for an inexperienced teenage boy to manage. Even though I knew we were incompatible and that it wouldn't last, the time we were together was the most I've felt alive in 22 years now. I always knew on some level that we'd never make it, but it still hurt me all the same when you did what you did.

You knew how proud I am. Why would you hurt me the way you did? You gave me commitment issues; trust issues; intimacy issues; control issues... you name it. You messed me up for life. You were the only girl I ever loved, and I don't think I will ever get over what you did. I haven't been able to love again, as hard as I tried, and that's your fault. Yet for some reason, instead of accepting this and moving on, my mind keeps going around in circles, like a sadistic game of Pac-man where I keep distracting myself with pac-dots to get away from the ghost(s) of your memory.

I know you tried to reach me a lot, but I haven't been able to forgive you and I probably never will. I didn't want to give you a chance to explain whatever motives you had because I was still hopelessly in love with you and I'd have probably forgiven you... again. I still can't believe I forgave you that one time... it's a testament to how much I loved you, but you took that love and wiped the floor with it before flushing it down the toilet.

I cut you out of my life because I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me. I wanted to deny you closure, but you know what's ironic? I denied it to me, too. After all these years, I can still picture your face at will, as clearly as if I just saw you yesterday... and it's been five years. The fact that you still pop up in my dreams after all this time is surprising, but the fact that I wake up smiling is simply unsettling. I don't know what to do anymore... I've made an art out of being trapped in the maze that is my past, and I'm running out of pac-dots.

I'm really not sure what I want to say, except that I hate that I still remember you. I hate that somewhere, deep down, there are  couple of Bondok molecules who are still in love with you and unable to let you go. I hate that in the act of never forgiving you, I've doomed myself to forever having that picture of your face engraved in my brain, beautiful and terrible and out of reach.

I don't want you back. I'll never want you back.
I hate you.
But I miss who I was with you.
and... I miss you.



  

The Impossible Dream

The war was not going so well. I laughed. Understatement of the century.

The Syrian offensive was repelled the day before, and the Israeli Air Force had just seized control of the Jordanian border crossing. Even though the Saudi Arabian artillery were punching holes in the Israeli armor in the South, the Israeli counter attack through southern Lebanon was as unexpected as it was catastrophic. I couldn't help admiring the Israelis... even faced with such overwhelming odds, they were still putting up an impressive fight. Their ace in the hole was their Air Force, but the combined force of the Iraqi, Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Air Forces prevented Israeli air superiority. Which didn't stop them making massive gains during the first four days of the war. However, Israeli economy can't sustain a prolonged armed conflict, and this is where we had the advantage if we could draw out the war.

But it was hard to see the advantage from where I was standing.

Sinai shares Israel's longest land border, which is why we took the brunt of their force. Which was just as well, seeing as there was an element of poetical irony that we were back here fighting our age-old enemy in the same bunkers we fought them from not that long ago. Not that my squad gives a hoot about poetical irony, as they drop like flies, one by one, bleeding out around me while I persist, fueled with rage and a thirst for revenge.

Prospects of survival were bleak.

The Libyan regiment which was our back-up was reassigned at the last minute to guard the supply lines. There was no way any special forces would be spared to help us, seeing as most of them were assigned to sabotage targets behind enemy lines... mostly nuclear missile launch facilities. The Air Force was no good either... they had bigger worries than a tank escort unit which lost their tank and had to take cover in an old warehouse. Most of my squad was down, and I'd already accepted the fact that I wasn't getting out of this one.

I looked at my remaining squad members as we ducked behind some old crates, and I nodded. There was a look of mutual understanding. We would come out guns blazing. I held up three fingers... then two- one.
"ALLAHU AKBAR" someone screamed.
I looked around me... it wasn't my squad. Confused, I gestured at them to emerge from cover anyway. We would have revenge. We would kill...
Bedouins?
I couldn't believe my eyes. "I must be delirious from lack of food and sleep", I thought. But sure enough, just as I emptied my first clip and ducked into cover to reload, one of them screamed "Allahu Akbar!" again. Israelis make it a point not to do that. What the hell is going on?

There was a sudden explosion nearby, and I was knocked into the concrete barrier I was taking cover behind. Even though my head was bleeding freely, the knock snapped me out of it. I understood... I'd been delirious alright.

Battlefield trauma has this fun little effect sometimes where it can make you delirious. Suddenly I became aware that there was no Syrian offensive. There was no Iraqi-Egyptian Air force. There was neither Saudi Arabian Artillery nor Libyan regiments. And we weren't fighting Israelis... In fact, at that point I was ironically kind of fighting for Israeli national security as I gunned down Bedouins in Sinai near the Israeli border. Moreover, I was completely on my own after the Bedouin attack on the backwater security checkpoint I was assigned to completely wiped out my unit... I'd been giving silent commands to ghosts for God knows how long.

I couldn't bear the thought that I was dying there alone to indirectly protect my real enemy, so my brain made up this elaborate, alternate reality to convince me that my death meant something. I spat, reloaded, and emerged from cover.

As I stood there, bitterly channeling my rage through the painfully inferior AK-47 that was all my government could afford me, I braced myself for a lonely, forgotten death in a far away outpost no one would ever remember. I  furiously blinked tears of rage from my eyes... A rage that I was no longer able to contain.

Impossible dreams are just that... they're impossible. And Arab unity is an impossible dream.

***

Growing up in the Middle East is not easy. We are nothing short of indestructible testaments to sheer human will to survive...

We receive no healthcare.
We eat carcinogenic, expired foods.
We live in slums (well, 90% of us do).
We receive little or no education.
We get hunted down by our own police forces like rabid dogs.
We also get hunted down by our own militaries like rabid dogs.
Daily bombings are a common nuisance.
Highway men are an accepted reality.
And to top it all, when we come of age, we (at least the males) ironically get drafted into the military to help the police kill our own brothers and sisters (sometimes literally) for political reasons the military is supposed to transcend.

And yet we survive to fight another day. I would say "live" another day, if there was any actual living involved. We just fight. Our lives are like chains of small fights in a sadistic video game, leading up to the boss fight at the end -namely cancer or liver failure from the genetically modified crap we eat- which we end up losing because of the non-existent healthcare plans. Suicide bombings are an alien concept to the west because they have decent lives and a lot to lose... But here, suffice to say that more than a few people would choose to blow themselves up if the payoff is a small plot of land in a rural village where they hope their families would live in relative comfort.

Forgive me the history lesson, but with that background in mind, it's easy to see how Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was so popular in the 1960s. Though I highly disagree with his methods, his reign marked the closest we got to having a unified Arab State and any sort of national pride. Pan-Arabism had always been a dream following the decolonization of the Arab world after World War II, but it wasn't until he was made president of Egypt that we saw the brief union between Egypt and Syria to form the United Arab Republic. Though he committed most of the Egyptian Air Force to an inconsequential civil war in Yemen which caused us to suffer a humiliating defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel; and he destroyed the Egyptian economy through a series of decisions we are still paying for until this day, he was a patriot and a born leader whose people would follow him to hell and back.

I mentally sigh when I remember the story of one of the wars Abdel Nasser stupidly got us into. In 1956, as retaliation against Britain withdrawing their offer to help build the Aswan Dam, he illegally nationalized the Suez Canal -before its contract's maturity date- while the masses cheered, not knowing that this would bring about a tripartite invasion of Egypt... Whereupon in a touching and unforgettable act of solidarity, when the Egyptian "Voice of the Arabs" radio station -which broadcast daily to several Arab countries- fell silent following an air raid, the Damascus Radio famously broadcast "From Damascus, this is Cairo"... It makes me irrationally angry that now when we read in the newspapers about the thousands and thousands of Syrians living in a wasteland that was all but part of Egypt one day, we shrug and flip to the sports section... Not for cynicism or lack of empathy, but rather because we can do absolutely nothing about it. It's very obvious that brute force is not going to solve the issue, and its not like sending the Egyptian Army there would do any good... In fact, judging by Egypt's abysmal state of affairs, it would make matters a lot worse. Besides, at this point -as much as it pains me to say it- it actually makes more sense to support Assad as he is the only hope for a unified Syria. Egyptians have seen what a power vacuum can do to a country, and its not that much better than a civil war.

But I'm getting side-tracked.

Unlike most Egyptian young adult males, I was not drafted into the Egyptian military because conscription is only obligatory if you have a brother... for some reason. However, I've heard the stories, and I'll tell you now that they can blab all they want about it being the most advanced fighting force in Africa (which is not saying much) and the biggest army in Africa (also not saying much) and the shield that guards the realms of men (Game of Thrones reference) with huge phallic-shaped swords that reflect pleasantly on the size of our collective manhood (overcompensation joke), it is still a running joke in Egypt how we use our "top-notch" F-16s (which are getting completely retired from the US Air Force by 2025, by the way) to draw hearts in the sky on the Armed Forces Day as crazed fanatics on the ground wave their posters of our "beloved" Field Marshal. But it's OK, we're putting the M1A1 Abrams tanks to good use as they reign supreme against... unarmed protesters. Well, that's not fair... They're also used to protect the military-owned factories which were originally built to produce ammunition and weapons but which now produce consumer goods and electronics. Because who needs assault rifles, right? Let's just use the ones we already have and sell washing machines instead to pad the top military brass's pockets.

It truly paints a beautiful picture of our guardians, doesn't it?

We grow up here knowing that Zionists are the enemy. Which don't get me wrong, they are... but are they the most pressing concern? Did Zionists shoot up the Cairo University campus, killing tens of students under the pretext that they are "terrorists"? The army's propaganda machine must be a force to be reckoned with, if anyone's actually buying this. Don't get me wrong, I believe that military rule is necessary in Egypt, for the same reason why I think Assad is a necessary evil for Syria. Historically, we've always been ruled by the military and it's the only thing we understand. But I am never going to come to terms with our blatant disregard for human lives for political reasons.

The Egyptian Army once gave Israel pause, because it wasn't just the Egyptian Army... It was an Arab army. Israeli incursions into the Gaza strip were unheard-of. Gaza was wholeheartedly supported by the Egyptian population, and it was reflected in our media. To hear it now, you'd think the Palestinian people are the enemy and that they should be gunned down on sight. What was once the only thing that kept the IDF in check is now running the IDF's errands in Sinai like faithful lapdogs, dispatching "terrorists" by bombing their houses in acts of savagery vaguely reminiscent of the IDF's own practices.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that I'm sick and tired of the hypocrisy. I'm sick and tired of being expendable. I'm sick and tired of being treated like a piece of gum stuck on someone's shoe... in my own country, no less. I dream of the day that Arabs unite. I dream of the day we stop needing visas to go to other Arab countries. I dream of the day we have one currency. I dream of the day Saudi Arabia finances Somalian and Yemeni healthcare and development projects. I dream of the day Kuwaiti funds pay for housing displaced Syrians. I dream of the day Oman funds the construction of nuclear/solar power plants to make the Arab world less dependent on fossil fuels; and finally, No one wants war... But if you want peace, you must prepare for war, and I dream of the day Egyptians, Syrians, Libyans, Iraqis, ARABS, mass on the Israeli borders to hold joint military excercises, finally posing a credible enough threat for the Israeli high command to rethink their policies against unarmed Palestinian children whose only fault was being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In short, I have an impossible dream.

Addio, Occhi Bellissimi

I'm gonna make this really simple for you guys; I am cheesy. I adore cheese in all shapes, colors and sizes, metaphorically, literally and figuratively. If you like to think of yourself as a world-weary, cynical being who is incapable of responding to human emotions, save your time and close this window. But if you decide to read anyway, be warned that this is cheese galore. What you are about to do is jump head-first into a tub of cheese and splash around in it, and no matter how many times I try to rephrase that to make it sound bad I fail.

You have been warned.

Based very loosely on a true story.You're free to interpret which parts are true, but I'm not responsible for what you read into it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit

He woke up at 6 AM; had to wrestle with his bag's zipper -which he could swear he'd packed last night- for a whole fifteen minutes; looked for his keys for another twenty minutes only to find them balled up in one of his socks and stuffed deep inside the bag he'd just zipped up; cursed colorfully while hopping around on one leg because he'd been trying to force the other into a pair of jeans which he soon came to realize was his hoodie. Long story short, he was late. He had an hour to somehow check out of the hotel, rush out into the hustle and bustle that is New York City, hail a cab and get to the station before the train left, which of course it did... only 2 minutes before he reached the platform.

Perfect. Now what? he'd just missed the last train out of Grand Central Station for another seven hours, because apparently specifically his train line had to undergo maintenance. It was no good brooding over it, but he was screwed. He had no idea what to do with three large bags and a very important business meeting that he was now definitely going to miss. It made no logistical sense to take a cab back to his hotel because the round trip would cost him about four hours anyway, including check-in and check-out, and he wasn't in the mood to make another booking for the night, knowing that he was definitely not going to use it. Sighing, he steeled himself for a long wait.

What he hadn't steeled himself for was a face-full of steaming hot latte.

Doubled over in agony, he desperately tried to wipe the scalding liquid off his face, while someone tried to apologize over and over as they handed him tissue paper. He felt so miserable at that moment that at some point his howls of pain turned into laughter. Confused, the person (who he now realized was a girl) stepped back uncertainly as though unsure what he was doing. Gasping for breath, he said "I think I owe you another latte, since I'm the reason you spilled this one". He looked her in the eyes, and when she saw the laughter in his, she gave a nervous chuckle, as though relieved that she hadn't just ticked off a mass murderer who was about to disembowel her and chew on her kidney. Soon they were both laughing so hard that her face was probably redder than his (even though he'd probably had second degree burns).

After going to the pharmacy and getting ointment for his burns, they started talking. Her name was the prettiest name he'd ever heard; it made him think of rainbows and milk chocolate. Sooner than should be possible for people who were hanging out together for the first time, they were clicking. They started talking about life, grand central, missed trains, missed opportunities, pie (I really like pie), politics, that interview he had with this company he was considering moving to, and they talked a lot about their families, ancestors and what they wanted to do with our lives. She was obviously a very strong, independent woman who was both very opinionated and accepting of other points of view, but was smart enough to pull it off without seeming like a know-it-all. The conversation was a nice break from the standard New York fare of only putting on an interested face while secretly thinking about pizza.

Let's take a second to appreciate pizza.

And we're back.

So anyway, it was past noon now, and he'd begun to really see her (partially because his eyelids were less swollen now). She really was a beautiful creature. She had long, luscious brown hair with a small blonde streak at its end; she had flawless skin, the kind that makes your skin look like frayed lizard scales in comparison. Her lips were just the right size; not thin enough to look like they were drawn on with a pencil, and not big enough to make you vaguely wonder if they double as airbags. They were perfectly red, without any signs of make-up or lip gloss. When she smiled, showing the cutest set of teeth that twinkled playfully in the sunlight, time stood still as he tried not to smile back stupidly like a mindless idiot. Though breathtakingly beautiful, however, none of her individual features could hold a candle to her eyes. He realized he must have been staring at her for a long time without hearing anything, and that his swollen face must look exceedingly hideous in stark contrast, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. When she paused for breath, he took off her glasses and looked into her eyes, and she looked back.

Her eyes were by far the most beautiful eyes he'd ever seen. It was as if Leonardo Da Vinci had used the Mona Lisa as a failed first attempt before wiping his ass with it and starting on her as his real masterpiece. Perfectly almond-shaped, confident, unblinking; her eye-contact said it all. And there was never a dull moment staring into them, because in a certain light they seemed as blue as the ocean on a clear day, while sometimes the light caught them at a certain angle which made them look as green as... (what's a pretty green thing? Frog? Pickle?) freshly cut grass on a warm summer day. If you were lucky enough, you might even see the grey in them, revealing a sad and mysterious past.

Suddenly a cloud blocked the sunlight, and as her eye-color dimmed he became aware that he was looking at a human being, not a painting. He must have stared at her for hours, but she didn't seem to mind... Is it possible that she'd felt the same way? Something in her eyes seemed to say so... It was a signal. A green light. He leaned in closer and...

The rudest awakening possible as the conductor announced the final call for her train.
Their time was up.

They both ran to the platform, and he hurriedly hugged her as she got on the train. She turned and looked back, and they shared a moment of sorrow as they both knew they would never see each other again. The train then pulled out of the station and out of sight forever... The moment had passed. He'd waited too long. And right then he knew that he would always regret it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There you go, triple helpings of cheese as promised. Since you're going to need a shower anyway, I'll go ahead and indulge my narcissism by talking about myself for a bit. I'm the easiest person in the world to fall in and out of love. My pride and my moodiness make me change my opinion about people all the time... but I despise wasted opportunities and what-ifs. I sometimes tend to fall head over heels for people, girls I've JUST met, and then get over them in 24 hours, sometimes more and sometimes less. Yep, I'm crazy and cheesy (chazy?). I'm chazy but you like it... loca loca loca. Admit it, you smiled at that. Or you have no sense of humor and I feel sorry for you.

Only one last thing to say: you know who you are.

Addio, occhi bellissimi.
Arrivaderci, bella.