Written in summer 2018. In remembrance of winter 2012
Far away from home, I walked down a nameless street, in and out of nameless shops, buying products I never believed in. Weeks after meaningful words have left me. Just when I needed them the most.
I’ve always been a talker, playing with words until they succumbed to my will. But now they have abandoned me. So did my healthy appetite and peaceful sleep.
Abandoned. Left to my own devices. I remain in the dark. Here I am, where kids attend music classes after school. Drinking clean water from the tap, long after the sewage has left my kidneys. Eating clean food with a stomach of steel that can digest stones. Rolling my tobacco and counting my Euros.
Is this what life is all about? Is this what my fellow Arabs have crossed the Mediterranean for? All the way from the land where our ancestors built sky-high Pyramids and dug deep canals.
I roamed the streets of Freiburg, a city not as white as I had thought. With new friends that I never thought I would ever meet. I yearned to get lost in big crowded streets where no one knows me. I missed the home that I no longer recognise.
And so I walked down that nameless street, struggling to catch the words that have left me. Suddenly, they slip out of my lips. Words that capture a strong realization. Captivating my own past.
It all started with you back in 2012, but now you are a nameless character in an unknown chapter. You opened the books for me and told me to read.
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. The relationship that she described as the biggest achievement of her life. Crazy sex, crazy love, and crazy heartbreak.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” she said.
A woman? Is that what I have become?
And now, so many years later, those words come out of my lips on that nameless street. Words I never used before. I hadn’t even noticed them when I said them.
Until I revisited Michel Foucault. I shut the windows and the doors. Deactivated my Facebook and went off the radar. Spent four days with him; ate with him, slept with him, talked with him, all the while meticulously rolling my tobacco.
“It is through sex that each individual has to pass in order to have access to his own intelligibility, to the whole of his body, to his identity,” he told me.
“What about the snowy days of Chwarqurna? The massacre that my mother survived while I slept soundly in her arms? Where is this sleep now? And the war that stripped my father off his soul? What about my young days in those dusty streets by the Pyramids, jumping from balcony to balcony? What about that gray street by the Faisaliah? And those pristine beaches and shiny Maseratis of the City of Gold? What about Mirissa and the bright full moons of Poya?” I thought as it suddenly dawned on me.
I tried to break free from the gender within me. Confronting that my realities are a series of social constructs and that my sexuality is man-made.
Here I am, playing “colored” in Freiburg after I have played “white” in Sri Lanka. With a grim past far behind, revisiting Foucault. Reading words that ignited my passion. Words that make me reconstruct my realities and recall my past with a new pair of eyes. You opened those books for me and now I can’t close them. The realisation that I have struggled with for so long started boiling up. And, along with Foucault, I revisited those words that slipped out of my lips on that nameless street.
The books that you opened my mind to have never left me. The Second Sex. Testo Junkie. Written on the Body. The Blood Magic. Modon El Melh. Ya Tale’ El Shagara. ‘Azazil. And many more.
Landlocked!
Written in the summer of 2018. In remembrance of the fall of 2017
Off I go. Up and down that nameless street where on every corner there is another soul, probably as trapped as my own. Far away from the shifting sands of my reality. Far away from the constant gaze that shaped my soul.
I walk in steady steps. Running from the past that defines me. Trapped within the body that dares to conceive and the mind that dares to think. The body that dares to bleed every month, oozing hormones that shape its edges. Functioning under labels that I will never find out how I would have turned out without.
Off I go. Walking in defiance. But every once in a while, I slip in words with hidden warnings. This is not who I am. This is who I have learnt to become. Within this body is a broken soul. Emancipated, but broken.
I try to reach out, in between all the statements that define my days. Shifting in confinement, within this mind, this body. None of them are really mine. They have been given to me with no choice of my own.
I stop. I turn. I leave everything behind.
The past creeps in, lurking from a dark corner when I least expect it. It pokes me with a needle, on time, German time. Sharp and punctual. Not a minute too early. Not a minute too late. A needle that took millions of lives to protect me. I can hardly face the time that failed me. It feels too early and it feels too late. Never right for my own pace.
The past keeps coming back. We exchange broken smiles. It reminds me of my struggle to find out who I would have become, had it not been for the institutions that turned me into a file with a serial number. It reminds me of the struggle that I confront every night when I admit to myself that I am more of a conformist than I pretend to be.
And then I stop. I turn. I leave everything behind.
I look beyond the trees, ignoring alien signs and traffic lights that I don’t understand. I see the prayer flags hovering over Thamel Street. I carefully walk under their shade like I understand all the signs. Living among the locals like I always have.
I revisit the epiphany that I never wrote about. On that day, through the morning mist, while I looked out the window at the dizzying number of rickshaws. Through the fog in the air and the clouded thoughts of my mind. I had already forgotten the exhausting flight that landed me here and the freezing bed in which I trembled all night. I had already forgotten the thousand miles that took me away from home in search of the exotic land where reality doesn’t sting just because it’s not my own.
It was late last year. No month. No date. And no time. Just you and me. The temperature had dropped to eight degrees, fatal weather for a desert creature like me. In the early hours of that morning, the travel book lay beside me nearly untouched. A quick search had already told me that Nepal was a landlocked country in the Himalayas.
Landlocked. That’s all I needed to know.
This is where climbers have been lured for a century, many of whom disappeared, never to be seen again. “Death in the clouds,” a newspaper had once called it, “tragic but unavoidable”.
Landlocked, I reminded myself.
Across the table from you, after our meeting with the elders of the Tibetan Muslims. That dinner changed something in me. Downing steamed Momos and Tibetan tea, talking about a religion that I had renounced seventeen years earlier. For Buddha. For Sri Ramana. For the Dreamers. Anywhere exotic that can take me away from my unforgiving past.
“My father left us when we were kids,” you told me.
“I felt it! Me too,” I answered, surrendering to the past that you confronted me with.
“Your mother struggled too?”
“Deeply,” I said, not even knowing what that meant.
Firm handshake. Broken smile. No hugs. No turning back. Just like the locals.
Here I am, months away from that dinner. Revisiting the epiphany that I never wrote about. Running away from the Spring and the Cause that I should write about. But what words can describe the dead and the lost that have left me sore inside out?
I bleed. I write. I shift from laughter to tears, not knowing which is which. Not knowing when the moment will strike when I stop and turn and look at all that I have left behind. And all the tears that I have shed for the home that rejected me just because my body dares to bleed and my mind dares to think.
Out of context. Out of order
Written in the fall of 2018. In remembrance of the winter of 2011
Out of context. Out of order. From the land of the seemingly condemned to the land of the seemingly free. Break the context. Defy the order.
Words that I once choked on in fear of losing. Scribbling them down in madness before they could leave me. With no inspiration in this world of privilege.
Flashback to the days that were spent in silence. And lost moments of sincerity when I was too scared to share. Over a cup of Argentine matte under the German sun. Listening to words that are louder than my own. Reminding me of the fears that I was too vain to admit. Fear of loneliness. Fear of companionship. Fear of fear itself.
Out of body. Out of mind.
Drowning in memories of a past where whips and veils are all that is to remember. And the growing distance that separates me from this past. Far away from the street that will never see the light of day. Where you drove forever to capture a photo that can keep me grounded.
Far away from the village that will forever carry the scars of a massacre. Where children sing about a dreamland in which men don’t die young and women don’t weep.
Drowning in my new world where I don’t quite belong. Where my reality has been turned into entertainment. A privileged new world that turned my massacre into news headlines.
Publishing words that misread my Cause. Calling my revolution names that I never used. Names that were not among any of the million slogans repeated in Tahrir.
News that misread my fight over the vulva and the veil. Writing about all the things that women in Saudi Arabia still can’t do, without talking to a single Saudi woman.
Turning me into a spectacle, the child that viewers are relieved is not their own but will still watch in the news.
Bear your scars with pride. Bear your pain with honor. Switch off the news. The blood of the deceased has not been shed for entertainment! Break the context. Defy the order.
The child that has become too close for comfort. Sitting right here, laughing over Argentine matte under the German sun. Pretending not to enjoy the life of privilege. Pretending to be sorry for leaving death and abuse for those who couldn’t escape. Pretending to have no silent words that never reach the surface.
Living in a new world that transformed me into a monument. A monument of social mobility. Of surviving massacres. Of forgiving my own violators. Of joining the Left and upholding the bourgeois ideologies that I can afford. Of consuming organic food and reducing my carbon footprint. Of marching in foreign protests with the locals for entertainment.
A monument celebrated as a rare victory in a world that has failed over and over again. And in the society in which I lost track of my own past. Left with nothing but a voice that has become too privileged for the streets. For the massacre whose scars I no longer bear. And the refugee status that I no longer hold. But this coarse voice will never belong to the “civilised” world.
Sharing Argentine matte under the German sun. Sharing a few words and leaving the rest for the silence. The silence of comfort distance. The silence of privacy. The silence that doesn’t tell you about the other side of me. The side that I lost along the way.
Back to the days when life came in simple black and white. When the fight wasn’t between two sides of me. And there was no Foucault to deceive me. Back in Omraneya where the only struggle was against power cuts and sewage water coming from the tab.
And the massacre where my enemy came in solid bullets and clear chemical gas. Back to the Holy Land where nothing but the veil could choke me.
When I didn’t care that I was that kid in the news. When my words never left me. When my mother was young enough to fight for me and hold me forever. And my scars were just on the surface and the pain wasn’t too deep. When I never lost home and home never lost me.
Out of context. Out of order. From the land of the seemingly condemned to the land of the seemingly free. Break the context. Defy the order.
Dreams
Written in the spring of 2024
During my slumber. By the silent red sea. Under the immortal skies. My mind was drifting. In and out of consciousness. In and out of dreams. Especially this one dream. Slowly coming my way. The dream that felt like you.
In this dream, you found the time. In between the emotional labour. The countless demos. The endless meetings. In between work and family and life. You found the time.
I was once warned. That in the last revolt which I missed. When the streets became ours. Taken back by the people. Hearts became wide open.
I was warned. That along with dissidence came open hearts. Leaving them vulnerable. Broken. Deeply lost in something beautiful. Like endearing hugs and acknowledging smiles.
Now I am reminded. Of the warning that I once heard. When you take the time. Just a few extra minutes. To hold me even tighter. To ask when you’re going to see me. To send me hugs and whales.
You looked at me with endearing smiles, but I never told you. Never told you how I longed for those hugs. And for the extra moments where you don’t let go. Never told you how I longed for the acknowledgment of those smiles.
You hugged me long and tight, but I never told you. Never told you where the whales once took me. Far away from this world. This world where I am currently trapped.
Trapped on the inside by the victim within. The victim that I failed to escape from. And that now weighs me down. Leaving me trapped. With no exit in sight.
Trapped on the outside by an ego that deceives me. Worse than my worst enemies. Deceived by the self that tells me nothing but lies. The self that I no longer trust.
In this world. Where I am captive. Invisible to my surroundings. Where only you could see me.
Where you managed to find the time. In between all the labour. Running from demos to meetings. Juggling between work and life. Just to hold me tight. And never let go.
Leaving this world behind. Leaving all the struggles behind. And whatever else we have both been dragged into.
So many years. So many dreams. Dreams that never came my way. Endless dreams that remained just dreams.
Deeper into my thought
Written in the summer of 2024
Sitting right here. Sinking deeper and deeper into my thoughts. Thoughts that take me on a long journey. All the way to the end of this world. Just to bring me back with empty hands. An empty mind. And a chest empty with no feelings left behind.
Sinking deeper and deeper into my thoughts. Remembering the life that was wasted. and the emptiness that that has left behind.
Sitting right here. Long after, I stopped waiting for the seed to blossom into a flower. Long after the coffee was meant to be drunk. And those little things that I was cheap enough to fall for. Long after I wrote about you in oblivion. Deliberately opening my heart. Carelessly making myself vulnerable.
Sinking deeper and deeper into my thoughts. Angry thoughts that fill my mind. And a broken heart that fills my chest. With nothing to blame but this damn self that deceives me. With nothing to regret but those books. And no one to blame but Foucault.
Trapped in so many things that I started missing Foucault. Why did you open those books for me and tell me to read? Why did you open my mind for Foucault? Why did you tell me about Beauvoir and Sartre and the crazy love that never left them?
Sitting right here. Trapped behind eyes that defy me in the mirror. The eyes that suddenly started revealing a soul that I never thought I had. And the self that seemed too broken to be saved. Too lost to be found. Too emancipated to look back.
Trapped behind the gaze that once deceived me in the mirror. The only gaze through which my eyes can make sense of this world. Showing me a face that I don’t recognise. And a strange body that occupied my soul. An occupied broken soul that I refuse to claim.
Faced by the self that I saw in the mirror. Turning into an illusion that eats me alive. Showing me phantoms that I never thought my soul could ever see. Turning darkness into light and light into silence. Until I’m trapped behind bars.
Sitting right here. Drowning in the search that became an addiction. Now, it deceives me and tells me lies. Trying to break away from my own mind and my own chest. Trying to break free from my memories. And the home that will forever linger in those memories. Frozen in time. Long after I have changed. Long after my heart has grown bitter.
A chest heavy with smoke. Heavy with breasts that have defined me. Heavy with words coming with no choice of my own. Words that have become my pride and my shame.
A chest heavy with burdens. Giving birth to new words. Giving birth to deep regrets. Giving birth to a thought that remained stillborn. All trapped within my own mind. In endless gestation. Leaving me empty. Wishing I had never opened my mind. Wishing I had never opened my heart. Wishing it had all remained inside.
Searching the universe within. For words. For freedom. For dreams. Words of a redundant language, initially perceived and eventually internalised. Internalised so deeply that I confused my words for the self that I failed to find.
Words that are coming out of their free will. Expressing thoughts that I didn’t even know I had. Coming out with a free will that I myself never had. Words that come to life as I scribble them down. Whether in madness or in sanity, I will never know.
Reminded of the home that came back to me just as abruptly as it had left. Filling my mind with darkness. Filling my chest with grief. It felt like a flash. A blink of an eye. A shock that leaves me in deep thought. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for years.
Another thought slipped out of my mind. Counting numbers that let me down. Poking me with a needle. Injecting me with the truth that I don’t want to see. Leaving me drowsy, hung up on things that I couldn’t even see. Making me return to what I once said. Words that once saw the light of day but found nothing but the wrong side of you.
Just like that dark past that once crept up on me. It swallowed me whole. The deeper I dive in, the darker it gets. With no end in sight.
My bones cringe
Written and re-written over many years
Waking up just to pour my stream of consciousness down on a piece of paper. In a continuous flow, uninterrupted. But even that damn paper left me. It flowed downstream carrying my words. Leaving me voiceless, helpless, with nothing but a pen and no words. Making my bones cringe.
The sound is already at my windows, knocking on my door, waking me up from my slumber. Telling me things that I’m not ready to hear. Things that make my skin shiver and my insides swerve. Things that make me curse my own mother for bringing me into this damn world. Making my bones cringe.
Sounds celebrating the freedom that I never knew. The freedom that has become misunderstood. Clearly defined and constructed, it has become a trap. The freedom that I dreamt of in deprivation, just to wake up to find out that it has become a trap. Making my bones cringe.
Sounds that I hear in silence. Sounds that I hear in grief. Grief over my own depravity. Grief over the words that fell short of their promises. The words that enslave more than they liberate. And that makes me yearn for my deep slumber. Until my bones cringe.
The freedom that dictates all the rules. The freedom that confines my voice. That tells me that I’m voiceless. What blind freedom can’t tell unheard from voiceless? Voiceless, it mocks me. This freedom is not for me. My bones cringe.
I shut the windows. I lock the doors. I wait for the darkness while freedom mocks me. I search for the voices coming from within. I search for the freedom that I once dreamt of. The freedom that I was born with, from the womb that I once cursed in anger. The womb that wrapped me into a little bundle of joy in a joyless life. The lost freedom that makes my bones cringe.
Little by little, darkness lurks back in. My pupils dilate, and my senses sharpen. High on alert, I start hearing whispers emerging in the distance. I try to listen, but my heartbeats are louder. I stay still, fighting the freedom that confines me. Suddenly, clarity strikes in and my heart falls silent. Until my bones cringe no more.
