The Stranger

The clouds were drenched with degrees of grey; the moon with cold silver, all were scattered across a black sky. Silence echoed everywhere, them, in the inscrutable horizon of ethereal figures, could hear it. Behind the closed windows, life lay.

   A pair of varnished shoes trod the ground. Wearing them, a man wrapped in a black coat the same texture as night.

   She looked like ice before melting. Her lips were painted in cheap red, her eyes in blue. Her body was easily traceable in the clothes she wore. She was old, and yet, young. Sitting beside her, was a bald man in his late fifties struggling to keep his eyelids open enough to make a person think he is alert.  The air in the bar was stale, was heavy.

    “They call us cheap,” her lips parted to say. “They call us cheap those women in fancy clothes.”

  “Yeah,” the bald man answered while resting his head on the table. He took another gulp of the beer.

    “They, those women I mean, got everything and are happy with it and we got nothing and are happy with it. Why won’t they just leave us alone? They and their stupid pride! I hate them.”

   The door of the bar opened. A man in varnished shoes and a black coat entered. There were only two people in the bar beside himself.

   “Aren’t we gonnaــ” the bald man halted, searching for air. “go?” he finally said.

  “No, not know. I mean, I dunno what else I’d like to be if I wasn’t here,” she continued.

  “What did you say? I didn’t hear that. I wanna go.”

     The man in black coat caught sight of the woman. He looked intently at her, confusion coloring his features.

   “I saidــ,”she trailed off, “Oh just forget about it. You know, I wouldn’t like to have their lives. I knew someone many years ago I can hardly remember her anymore.  She  had it and she just didn’t want it. It was all too heavy, owning everything and losing yourself in between… that’s what she said.”  She saw a man in black coat, his eyes fixed on her. She was used to men looking at her. She tilted her head the other way.

   “Did you say we are gonna go now?” the bald man asked, breathing heavily between the words.

    “No. No, I didn’t say that. That woman, she reminded me of something, we are all suffering. We ,all of us, are the same. Running away is sometimes inevitable for you to believe it” She looked at the bald man, caring for nothing more than the cup of beer he clutched. She smiled. Bitterly.  “And why am I telling all of this to you?  These are not secrets. I guess confessions also count even when the person you are talking to won’t understand a thing. So now, I am making confessions, that’s what I’m doing.” She laughed, a sick laugh, chocking on tears. Her eyes then fell on the man in black coat. He was still looking at her. She let her eyes search his face and was swept by an eerie sense of déjà vu.

   The man in black coat saw that the woman was too looking at him. He took that chance and advanced towards her.

   The woman saw the man coming her way. She looked away nervously. He lifted her face in his hands and bent to have a closer look at it. It felt like oxygen had totally escaped the bar. He let go of her face in embarrassment.

  “I am very sorry,” he said, “ you look a lot like someone I used to know…but you couldn’t be her.”

   He turned away heading for the door, the weight of disappointment obvious in the way his shoulders hunched.

   “But what if I am her?” the woman abruptly said, resting her head on one hand in a reckless manner. Challenge colored her tone

   The man stopped. “No,” he murmured as though to himself, “ You are  not her. Nothing can ever happen to change someone so much.”

      “You are quite wrong,” her face went very stern, “Life happens.” She let out another sick laugh.

     He looked at the woman in front of him and forced his memory to recollect shreds of what she looked like. There was a great similarity between the two faces but, no, she couldn’t be her. She, who owned everything could never one day be so cheap. He went away, the thudding of his varnished shoes no longer to be heard.

    She looked at the man, tracing his every step to the door. And when the door was slammed, she watched as he slowly faded into an ethereal silhouette of black in the horizon.Her eyes could no longer see him, and out of them, tears were spilled

Impure

  “Excuse me,” a little girl said from behind her, “I want to pass.”

    It was that inescapable feeling again sweeping over her. It was that sense of long lost  innocence brought by the wideness of those girl’s eyes. The distant past of laughter and ignorance pressed like a hidden wound. And now that she was  impure, it all seemed so far away.

    “Of course,” she said with a smile that poured bitterness into her face.

    She pushed her way through people and the humid molecules of air. Her voice of thought was an imperceptible susurrus transgressing against the noises in the street. Sometimes, it would be silenced altogether. She’d hold her breath and pray she didn’t forget it somewhere in the crowds.

    After getting lost within the grey concretes of streets for many hours, she bought the cigarettes and headed back home.

   “What took you so long?” her mother said, “ Do you even realize what could happen if your dad came and realized you were not home yet?!”

 She passed her mother without a glance wearing her mask of indifference.

   “And can you imagine what the neighbors may be saying right now,” she went on, “ ‘She can’t raise her daughter’, ‘Her daughter enters the house by herself at 9 PM’,” The mother so perfectly mimicked  those woman looking through the cracks of every door and whispering to each other in that wicked voice what they  saw. Perhaps it came out so well  because she was one of them.

   She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Her mother fiercely flung it open. “I’m not done yet,” she said hoarsely.

   “In half an hour, I want you dressed. Your aunt called and said she found a suitor for you. Now don’t you dare drive him away like you always do.”

    She opened her bag and got out a cigarette. When her mother wasn’t looking, she lit it and put it between her lips.

 Everything fell into an ominous silence. That silence before the storm.

   “Oh dear! I can’t believe my eyes. Oh dear..Oh dear! What have I done God to deserve such a thing for a daughter. Oh dear!” and then she shouted, “Throw that thing away!”

  She now looked her mother’s way, with a cloud of smoke surrounding her. “But you can’t make me do it. Now, I became addicted and if I try to stop, I’ll look so bad nobody will want to marry me.” Her voice was ever so calm and to further infuriate her mother, she said that smiling.

   “I said throw this thing away!”

   “You are mad because now you can’t control me. You are mad because I am not saying yes to whatever you say. Admit it,  you never loved me. Dad never loved me. You all wanted to have a boy. Why didn’t you just kill me when I was born instead of torturing me like that?”

   “I said throw this thing away!”

     “You just want to get rid of me. Every breath that comes out of me is a shame. I am a walking shame. You bring all kind of ugly men and have me sitting at one side of the room dressed like a pretty doll while deciding who you will sell me to. But you see, I am not going to get dressed tonight, because I don’t want to get married.”

    She looked around to find herself thrown on the ground, droplets of blood coming out of her cheek. Her mother had slapped her.

   Her mother stood panting and when she was able to regulate her breath, said, “You will get dressed and one day or another, you will get married. You are a  woman. That’s what women do.” She heard the door being shut.

   Minutes, long minutes lasted with her lying on the ground. Everything pressured her down she couldn’t find the strength to stand up. The world was tumbling down around her. She was not good anymore. She was not innocent anymore. Everybody looked at her that way. Long ago, she had taken off the dress of  purity to stand naked in the wind. Everybody wanted to cover her up because she was the incarnation of their hidden desires. She always looked proud in her nudity. But her mother said that women’s job in life is to get married and obey their husbands. The bitterness aroused in her soul. She couldn’t bear the weight of her breasts, the weight of her body, the weight of being a woman. She couldn’t escape what she is, She couldn’t burry it so that nobody would see it. She was their walking shame. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she saw how anger twisted her face giving it such an evil look. So many times, she had stood up confessing her impurity to herself and was happy with it. So many times all she wanted out of life was not virtue but freedom. Now, her nakedness looked so painful. Now, she was faced with the realization she always wriggled. She is a woman. Women get married. That’s what women do. In that, she found a way to be good again. She stood up and started getting dressed.

Clouds ـــ An Allegory

Her fingers clutched the iron chains tightly  making the blue color of veins appear prominently behind her flushed skin. She took three steps backward, thrust her feet in the ground and then, let goes. Gusts of air hit her in the face making strands of  her chestnut hair fly everywhere. A tiny giggle escaped her mouth. Ellie looked at her mother standing with hands crossed and a smile of satisfaction on her lips, waved, then prepared for another round on the swing.

   The sun was blazing. Ellie cherished a belief that they had been there for long and ought to be going away soon, so even s weariness started clambering up her bones and the movements of the swing felt rhythmic the  thrill they used to give was gone, she still insisted on sitting there and doing it over again. There was nothing else to do.

   This time, the swing went far too high. Fear took over Ellie that she would fall and hurt her legs causing her mother to shout at her. When the swing started  slowing down though, she decided to repeat it again. Every time, she saw the sky hanging up there with dispersed clouds  and her feet only inches away from touching them, a longing burnt in her heart . She kept on trying but encountered nothing except failure. She then came to the decision, if she couldn’t touch the clouds, she would follow them to where they go.

   Even though the place was clamorous , Ellie tiptoed until she was a bit far from the swing; she’d seen it done in a cartoon before.  Her mother was engrossed in talking with a friend and wouldn’t notice her absence. Ellie had thought of asking her permission but was sure of rejection, yet now, discerning her face that looked so kind, she considered going back to the swing. She was torn between what she wanted and what she had to do. Ambivalence seized her from pursuing the clouds instilling doubts in her heart of whether it was the right thing to do. And yet, she didn’t know why it would be wrong; it would provoke her mother, she was sure, and that was always simply enough to detain her from doing it. But then she thought, her mother never said to her, “Don’t leave the swing.” And never said, “Don’t follow the clouds .” So maybe after all she would be okay with it. That put Ellie a bit at ease and made her resolved on doing what she wanted.

    Her eyes wandered off to the sky, and between a cluster of clouds, she chose one to follow with ravenous desire to know that surfaced a feeling of guilt twinging every now and then.

   The entire of her head was directed to the sky. She had been looking at her cloud for so long she could describe every little detail of it if asked. It was as though she dissolved in it and abandoned every other thing that was not it. Her legs had grown weary of walking long ago but stopping was not a thing she considered, her desire moved her further then her body would.  Within her mind, she drew the world of that cloud came from and a smile broke upon her lips whenever she imagined she would be there soon. For now, time was forgotten, tiredness was forgotten and her mother was forgotten. She no longer looked at the road ahead of her, just at the sky; but a rock in the way, brought her down to the ground again.

    She had fallen and injured her knees. The sight of blood oozing out of it and the sudden pain horrified her. Maybe that was the reason her mother, as she was certain, wouldn’t approve of her following a cloud. Maybe she should have just sat on the swing. Guilt overtook everything, until her eyes looked up again to see that the cloud was slipping away. With all her strength, she stood up and continued walking. Moments later, she was forced to stop; her mother came.

    The wrath in her mother’s eyes made Ellie cringe. The moment she was close enough to her, she started shouting.

    “What the hell were you doing in here? Do you know how worried I was?”

    “Sorry,” she said, her voice shaking.

    “Now tell me, what made you leave the swing and go here? And Oh. My. God. Look at what happened to your knee!”

    “I wanted to know where clouds go so I was following one.”

      “You followed what! You are a clever girl Ellie, and clever girls don’t stay such stupid things. Clouds don’t go anywhere.”

       With these words, her mother shattered her fancies into small pieces that hurt more than anything Ellie had felt before. Through a curtain of tears she said, “They do! You told me that everything goes somewhere.”

     “Now you come with me. It’s time to go home.”

       Her mother carried Ellie in her arms. One last time, her eyes wandered off to the sky. Her cloud was not there. It abandoned her. Clouds are cruel things. Clouds mislead you and make you fall and hurt yourself. Clouds make your mother mad at you. Clouds make you do stupid things. Clouds don’t go anywhere. The tiredness was now overwhelming. She closed her eyes and slept. Deeply. 

I have been having many thoughts concerning certain stuff and thought that using this allegorical form to portray them would be the most adequate thing. Every character, thing and event in here stands for something. I'll be posting a detailed explanation later, but first, I am asking you to kindly tell me your own version of interpretation. 

The Way Back Home

At the age of eight, there were many things I had yet to learn: Earth is the third planet away from the Sun; salt consists of sodium and chlorine; wrong things  aren’t always wrong; happy endings are of stories that haven’t ended.

 Language was not one of them.

    A heavy cover of fog shrouded the place. When I was young, I had a childish notion that fogs are made when a giant sighs. So in my head, I saw a giant man resting his head against a tree and sighing. He was tired. Giants couldn’t be tired, a voice of thought interrupted. But that was something I couldn’t make sense of. Some way or another , everybody had to be tired. When dad came back home he was tired.  When he hit mom she was tired. And when they told me we would move to another country, I was tired.  

  In the fog,  I could see a faint trail of how every road began, but the ends were still something of an enigma to me. Everybody headed somewhere, that was the only thing I knew. I then looked at mom. Though she was only thirty-two by then, the skin around her eyes sagged. She cried a lot. I thought that tears drag your skin down with them; that’s why I never cried. It was years later, when my skin sagged just like hers, that I learnt, to cry, you don’t really have to shed tears.

   She waved goodbye and started to fade away in the fog. I felt a tingling feeling in my stomach that rose up to my chest adding to every breath a chill. I dragged my legs and entered the school.

   I was at a loss. It seemed to me that the fog was only in my eyes to blind me. I feared that I would stumble if I walked any further. After long minutes that felt like forever,  I summoned my power and asked about my class.

  When I entered, they had already begun. I had a petite figure, so when the teacher didn’t ask me about my name, I just thought she didn’t see me. I noticed how when she shouted, a nerve in her neck shook in a funny way. So I laughed. She then heard me.

 “What are you laughing at?” she said.

  Shivering, I answered, “Nothing.”

“Well then, I want you to write ‘People who laugh at nothing are stupid’ and bring it to my desk tomorrow”

  When the break came, I asked where the roof was and ran all the way up there. I felt mortified and didn’t want anyone to see me.

   I could see the ocean from there. Out of my pockets, I got out a small map and unfolded it. Back home, my friend told me we’d only have the Mediterranean  in our way. I asked how I would cross it. She smiled and said, “You just swim.”
  My eyes fell on the river. Back then when I used to stroll by its side, it'd looked so vast. But now, it ran down the map like a scar. 

 “Hey,” a voice came from beside me.

I didn’t answer.

“You know why Mrs. Peanut Head shouted at you?”

I then looked over my shoulder to find a boy my age. I understood who he was talking about and was interested to hear his explanation.

He sighed and said, “Will you just look at your hair,” he then held it in his hands, “She’s jealous of it.”

I was truly puzzled and had to ask him, “Why would that happen? Her hair is quite good”

“Finally, you’ve talked!” he sighed, “When Mrs. Peanut Head was a young girl, she went to the zoo and stood beside the monkey cage. They all thought she was a huge peanut and wanted to eat her. By the time the security came, all her hair was chewed. What you see is a wig.”

I knew that was intended as a joke, still, to imagine the whole scene in my head, I couldn’t help laughing.

He stretched his hand and smiled. “Mark",  he said.

I stood up and shook hands with him. “Cecil,” I answered.

  Looking at his face, I learnt my first lesson in language; that language hardly spoken by the lips. Beyond every word, there’s always a thousand word that translate according to the listener. So there is not one language, there’s a million that may share the same words.  And those that are never spoken, are the most powerful.

  I wished I could tell mom before she packed her clothes telling me she was going home, and dad when he didn’t come from work and people told me that his soul went home, what I heard in Mark’s smile that day. It whispered to me, “Home is not that far away.”

10th DoM

Color Blind

I drew and you wrote.

   I loved the fluidity of charcoal as it stained the stark white pages with pieces of my mind. Sometimes,  lines would  hug and intertwine forming shapes; quite a lot, they were only shredded pieces of dispersed thoughts. I was more comfortable with the ambiguity  of grey mirroring the mess of me; we both too unruly to be tamed by names  You loved the definitive sense words gave you. In your world, everything had a meaning and whatever had meaning must be a word and what’s not a word is nothing. I was your only exception as you were mine.

   I argued that the first people used pictures and drawings to communicate as scientists found on the walls of caves. You laughed and said that it’s what got them in there in the first place; civilization  began when they started using their tongues in something more useful than making meaningless sounds like animals do. I just shrugged and said that it’s boring to have a word for everything.

Two people couldn’t be more different.

You listened to Debussy and Beethoven and I to KISS and Nirvana.

You wore Armani and I whatever I found not coffee-stained.

You ate at fancy restaurants with a large group of friends and I in the streets observing people from afar.

You planned everything ahead and I just did whatever my twisted brain would suggest.  

You were a day person and I a night person.

You were a communist and I an existentialist; which was, besides shapes and words, one of the things we’d always argue about. You thought that existentialism would mar any human progress because no person could make it as a single entity.  I thought that communism was just another way to cancel individuality using the façade of equality, which, of course applied to everyone but the governor who would suck all the money.  To you, communism was the promised utopia and to me, existentialism was how my life went on.

Two people could not be more different

Yet,  we had one thing in common.

We thought the only reason love made it as far as the twenty-first century is to make millionaires out of movie-makers. We both didn’t believe in love.  Each had a different view . You  couldn’t define it and I’d never seen it lasting. People get married, some get divorced and others stay together for the wrong reasons. Here’s the thing about love, it’s a feeling, and all feelings are like candles. Love being a violent one, the candle melts way  too fast. Soon, you are left with wax without a blaze, but it's enough to remind you that something used to be in there.  So you hold on, wishing for that spark to light you up again. But it rarely ever does.

    We weren’t what you’d call two people in love. To you, I was a special friend because I was different from the other people you knew. To me you were a special friend because I knew no one at all. But, curiously enough, I knew you.

   Many times you suggested to introduce me to the people you knew but I’d always refuse. I didn’t belong to people, or to anything really. I lived in many places, traveled to many countries, inhabited many houses, yet, I could call none home. I was too trapped within myself to ever see anything from the world but a blur of colors. You once joked with me calling me a misanthrope; it was when you saw that I didn’t smile that you realized it was something serious to me. I often thought of it, and came to the conclusion that I didn’t hate people; I just didn’t care for them.

   When I first showed you the stuff  I ‘d drawn, you said I must be color blind. I guess you’d thought I painted with a brush and used an easel. Your statement, though,  had some truth to it; I could see all colors only in shades of grey.

    I was curled up in bed, rather paralyzed in it. It was not tired legs that led me there, it was a heavy heart. I cried. I hadn’t done so in a while. It wasn’t relieving like they say; tears dragged tears and soon, my eyes were too blurred to see the light. I was twenty-five, empty, and alone. I didn’t want to die like this. And I didn’t want to live like this either. I only fitted into my skin, where my grey soul poured, happy for having a cover in the color of glistening masks and thickness of  a shield. It hurt, I won’t deny. Sometimes, the shield was too heavy  and sometimes, it made my lungs close in. Yet, it was the best solution; I was too fragile to last in a world where things didn’t flow the way charcoal  did on paper. I wanted to skip those minutes soaked with sadness to more benign times; and then, all I could see was you. I’d been considering it for quite a while now, calling you. I wanted someone to get me out of here and you happened to be the only someone I knew.

  Half an hour later, at 3:20, you were standing at my doorstep.  

   One of the things I loved about you was how you knew it wasn’t quite easy for me to talk about something painful. So, like what anyone would do, you didn’t just twist your face in pathos, ask about how I felt, and started the whole life-is-good crap. You commented on how my flat should enter the Guinness World’s Records for the most chaotic thing on Earth. I answered that chaos is complex order. You didn’t understand me so I had to explain: Chaos is a word created by us humans as to define things we couldn’t see the pattern of. Everything in life follows an order. Things ‘randomly’ thrown around in my flat were a result of my state of mind. Thus, it was actually mirroring the way I felt in its own complex pattern. When we ‘organize’ something, we are only creating simple patterns for us to be able to follow; and me being the farthest thing from simplicity, it wasn’t strange my flat being like that. You replied that it wasn’t okay for me to live in such a zoo then create a philosophical theory as an excuse for it. You then threw a bag  lying on the ground and said it wasn’t you doing it, just your state of mind. I’d been feeling more like a zombie for the past few hours, but you knew well how to provoke me; mocking my theories was unforgivable. Soon, we were hysterically laughing while throwing everything found on the ground at each other.

I tripped and fell on my head.

    I must’ve blacked out for few seconds. When I opened my eyes, everything was literally a blur. Soon, I could make things out. You were lying right beside me at such a proximity I could see every little detail in your face. We’d never been that close before. And there were your eyes, without the glasses for the first time, looking into mine. I could see you then, clearer than ever and I could tell you saw me too. Your breath brushed against my face speeding  my heartbeats. It was an awkward moment, we weren’t used to feeling like this. But that’s what made it beautiful. I knew that right then we had the same thought buzzing in our heads: we were not just friends. I was the one who spoke it out asking what exactly are we. You answered that it’s boring to have a name for everything.

No two people could be more different.

That was what we’d  thought.

Sorry for slacking off lately!

Shields of Silence

I watch the night’s sky graying with black clouds following their invisible trails to evanescence,  ghosts of a time that is no longer there and let my mind wander away with them.  Occasionally my  eyes fall on a blank page imagining a chaos of spilled ink on it. Between my index and middle fingers I  toy with my pen and from time to time, I let it draw words on the paper but then, I tear it and start anew, staring at a stark white page. It’s been hours and I still don’t know what next to write.  What is her name going to be?

   She feels every eye scrutinizing her.  “What’s your name?” The teacher asked. They all want to know. With each minute elapsing , a daunting pain hunts her young heart. Finally, the teacher tells her to sit down, but at that second, her voice finally escapes her lips. “Drew,” she says.  Silence. Everyone laughs. She said her name the wrong way and now she has to be trapped in the echoes of it being imitated by the other children. Listens. She listens. But she cannot bear it anymore. “They all hate me” They all hate her. Rage is building up fringed by her shields of silence, but then, it evades. “Stop!” She yells, “Just stop!” She runs out of the class, slamming the door behind her.

   At the end of  Drew’s first day in middle school, two things happened: She got punished for leaving the class and she earned the name “Drew the Whacko”

Drew. Her name has to be Drew. She is Drew.

   When I hear the sound of footsteps thudding, I hide the papers under the desk and manage to slip the pen into my pocket. Matt must have woken up. He says good morning. Then, I find myself  within Drew as the next scene gets written within my head.

   Years pass by. Drew is now married. She stands silently watching her husband as he gets dressed knowing  too well what his destination is going to be. Creased, in her hand, is a note she’d found the other day forgotten in one of his pockets.  She can face him, tell him she knows but.....

Matt’s cell phone rings. I move out of the room as fast as possible in order not to hear.

He calls me on my out.

“Drew,” I turn my head, “Can you please wash the black suit? I am having a meeting tonight”

  Yes Matt yes, it was in the black suit that gave you away. Her name is Jane and not James, like you are calling her in front of me. And by the way, I know you are not going to any meetings because you were fired two months ago. But you think I am Dumb Drew that’s why you find it so easy to obliterate me and talk to her while I am in the room. But you are right, I am dumb and stupid. I wash  to you every night the clothes you stained with her so that she can see you as beautiful as can be, while all I deserve is  you in your dirty pajamas. I cook and clean to save her the effort of doing so. And of course I have to pretend that it’s all alright treating my heart like a stone. But Matt, I won’t be the one shattering the peace of our family. I will have to wait. I am the one you love. I am the one you come to at the end of the day.

  When I am done, I hurry to my story. Drew faces her husband. He confesses but also tells her he can’t be with her anymore. He leaves her and all she gains is regret for shattering her shields of silence.

10DoM Post

Hold The Rain

As I sit waiting,  I close my eyes and let the whishing  sound of leaves paint thoughts within my head similar to those I have at the eerie minutes before sleeping when reality and dreams mingle and you can’t tell if you are awake. I feel the dust beneath me curdling. Seconds later, the train arrives and it starts pouring. I open my eyes to see you smiling, “It’s time to go,” you say. I carry my bag with one hand and with the other, try to hold the rain. It always slips away.

I press my head against the window. The moon is a crescent….it’s smiling  at me. My breath falls on the glass and my eyes dart towards the seat before me where you are sleeping. I can see the air coming out of your nose. I draw a smiley face. With the sleeve of my jacket, I erase it and draw something else.

I hear your keys opening the door and  scurry to it. Panting, you enter. I let my arms circle around you. Noticing  how much weight you have lost I smile and say, “Finally, a diet has worked!” I feel an abrupt shiver running through your body. I look at your face and  see a smile, too wide… too peculiar for it. “Yeah,” you reply and start  whining about the heat. I don’t remember this until later.

The silence of your breaths still my lungs

 I enter the train. Through the window, I see the moon, smiling from last year. I want to change it into a grimace but it won’t go upside down. I sit on the empty seat before me, and it’s still smiling. Tears escape my eyes. I was too stupid, life was never  laughing with me, it was laughing at me. 

Happiness is the seconds you hold  the rain.

                                                                                   

Safeyya

A Story From Modern Egypt




In front of the mirror, Safeyya stood putting on the cheap mascara  she bought yesterday from an everything-for-two-and-a-half-pounds shop. Afterwards, she decided to wear her green lenses for she thought they would fit her screaming-yellow outfit she wore for work today. They did not at all match her color of skin, the lenses, and neither do they fit most of the other girls who wear them, but in Egypt, it’s not a common thing to find someone’s eyes having a color other than brown; and  the same  way it always happens in every place in the world, a country’s women yearn to look like another’s, and eventually,  they wind up making billionaires out of cosmetics’ companies. She tied her hair and wore the veil which formed a paradox with the tight clothes that made it easy to know what every part of her body looked like, but as a simple average girl, that was not a thing that had ever entered her mind. She hummed a song she’d heard yesterday on the radio while admiring herself in the mirror. Safeyya was not beautiful, and that was not unusual in her surroundings.

      After saying goodbye to her mother, Safeyya headed for the door and went down the stairs in a dancing movement now singing somewhat loudly the part she managed to memorize from yesterday’s song. She heard a sound of a door being slammed and was abruptly abashed and stopped her singing and dancing until the man who was there went away. She looked up and down checking if some other person was going down but, being put out of mood, she did not resume what she was doing.

   Standing in the street for fifteen minutes still not finding any empty place in a bus, she started to become somewhat worried. She considered getting on a taxi, but the thought of paying twenty pounds was appalling enough to make her totally throw that thought  out of her head; it was what she made in two days. But then, if her boss knew she was late, he would not give her the day’s salary and if she did not go at all without previously telling him so, that would be three days salary. Silently, trying to wind down, she prayed to God until she found a bus.

  Ascending the bus, which was a moving ball of human flesh adhered together, was quite a struggle. And what was harder, was clinging to the bars hung on the top of it without falling  and bearing the heat and the odor, not to mention the pain in her feet. Finally coming out of it to the air, she breathed a sigh of relief and thought to herself that it felt more like a stove than a bus. The ride on it twice everyday was inevitable which made her miss the winter days  in which she was not soaked in her own perspiration, but still, that did not save her from the other stuff. Taxis’ fare is twenty pounds; buses’ fare is one. That was enough reason for her and for millions of Egyptians to tolerate it.

   Safeyya was a salesgirl, and had been for the last three years of her life. She was only twenty and did not go to college having stopped her education as was her father’s wish to help in the expenses of their family, and she did not disagree with him; she had no interest in university and thought it was great she made it as far as high school.

  “Finally,”  Nahed, her colleague and friend  said at the sight of her. “ I was so scared he’d (their boss and the owner of the shop) come and ask why you were late." She was still making clothes for her second child; she was going to give birth in winter and did not have enough time in home to do that, so, she made them instead at work.

  “You mean he didn’t come,” Safeyya said quite relieved with the good news. “Thank God,” she said while slightly closing her eyes and sighing.

She placed her bag on a nearby table and took a seat beside Nahed.

“Aren’t you gonna tell me about yesterday’s suitor?” Nahed said.

  Safeyya sarcitaclly smiled and said, “the same..he sweated like hell, spitted while talking, had a mother who saved him the effort of talking, and who looked like the most unpleasant mother-in-law anyone could ever have.”

   “And how much did he make?”

 Safeyya raised two fingers.

  “Tell me that did not mean two thousand.”

  “You guessed right.”

  “And you refused him!” she now raised her eye browse, “what a fool you are!”

  “ I found it pretty hard to stay with him for half an hour and you want me to marry him?!”

  “Yes,” her friend said without one second of consideration.

   “He went away so whatever.”

   “Still, the shadow of a man is better than that of a wall” It was an Egyptian idiom .

    After one minute of silence, Nahed said, “ What are you thinking of?”

   “Huissen,” she said a dreamy look covering her face.

    “And who is that?”

    “ A guy I used to go out with four years ago.”

    “ You used to go out with a guy, if I did so, my dad would have buried me alive and Abbass wouldn’t have agreed to marry me.”

   “Like it was not the same for me, I just managed to keep it under covers.”

    “And what brought him to your mind now?”

    “ He was sooooo cute!”

     “Why did not you get married then?”

    “Are you kidding, he barely made five hundred pounds.”

    “You could’ve married the one who made four times as much as that and you refused because you just didn’t like him.”

   “ Listen, I absolutely know that love doesn’t pay the rent, but, that guy was unbearable so enough talking about him and tell me, did Abbass buy you anything for valentine’s day?”

   “Meat.”

  “Huh?”

  “ You heard that right.”

  “Okay now, I cannot remember the last time I ate meat. What did you want then, a teddy bear?”

  “Flowers would be great you know.”

  “You could go to any garden and smell as much flowers as you want. But now, one kilo of meat costs 50 pounds, so, if you eat it once every week, that would cost you 200 pounds which is two thirds our salary.”

  “ I still wanted the flowers.”

  “And you call me a fool?”

    At the abrupt sound of the door opening, they both stood up.  it was the first customer of their long working day,  which lasted from 9 am till 8 pm. But in fact, their days seemed to last longer than 24 hours, more like a lifetime.

My Name ــــ Story

You saw me standing alone and asked if you could stay with me for a while. You never were considerate and the word “gentle” was an antonym to your name. It surprised me. We talked like there was never a thing between us and on parting, you didn’t remember my name.  It has been years, many of them and you conquered the rules of time in my mind to be always in the present so no second passes  without you sealing it. But you don’t remember my name. How come when you were the one who taught me how to talk? After years of silence, you granted me the words and I started writing, everything imaginable and maybe unimaginable and like a baby who has just learnt how to speak, your name was in every page, every line, every word, every dot even when it was not present, it was there, your shadow was there and when I had not the least intention to write you, your ghosts haunted my pen.

   You don’t remember my name…but you remember my face. Your eyes devoured it… you stole it and rendered me prisoner to yours. You held a rope at one end, and at the other, you  tied a knot around my finger. And you started walking around me, the way wolves do before attacking their preys, you were too stupid to see I had already surrendered..like a thief who saw no use in running, and gave up because it was easier. I wasn’t the thief..you were. Every time you moved, the rope circled around my hands, my arms, my legs, my body, me , all of me….remember me?

    You once admired a red dress I had. you don’t remember it, do you? I do. Red became my favorite color because of you, and it was your favorite color because it seeped out of the hearts you ruthlessly murdered and did not bother to know a name for.  They were all your victims, we were all your victims.

    Once, I dreamt of you..you were weak, vulnerable; everything you were not in real life and then, you started crying in my arms. I told you this dream and you laughed saying I must be feeling very sorry for you now. I smiled and said I did, but I was lying. I didn’t want to wake up from this dream where you happened to need someone, an imperfection you hated, and I was that someone you needed. I loved the feeling of your head spreading all over my chest and me holding you asking you to cry more, let it all out, but in truth, I feared that when you’d be strong enough, you’d leave.

  I bet my story  is too clichéd for you, you’ve heard it before and became weary of it …your ears created a shield blocking it away from entering your mind and being interpreted as a voice of someone who held a memory in your subconscious….that’s why you can’t remember, because unlike everyone else you knew a name of, you did love me.

    

Within Me

I once heard that when you are writing, you are getting into deep with yourself, that self you know, or think you do; then start talking in symbols, unfathomable to everyone but you. So I’ll try, I’ll try to break that boundary, try to decrypt my words for you to understand, making some room for you to enter me, be...within me.

  The fading strings of night circle around my heart, it never tries to escape them, they are its cords to play with the beating that keeps me alive; so that the night never really departs…today is tonight, and tonight is my ephemeral form of eternity where my imagination fires up and bits and pieces of my soul clamber for you to see. And when I imagine, nothing can be more real, or at least that’s what I dupe myself into believing. So many faces are mine but no eye gets to see them but that  of my mind. Remember that girl with shrill voice who uses her hand a lot while talking and has an awkward pronunciation of the  “r”? I hate her, and hate that she’s all they get to see of me. Me…..I always make you in my fancies the only one who knows her. We’d meet up and talk for hours about me, but you never reply. You know why? Because within me, you are not you, you are my reflection who can’t split into half and have a voice of its own to speak. And till  now, I still wonder if I loved you or merely  another version of myself. But you never got to see me, that’s why we talk a lot about her. Sometimes, I'd see you in my room, checking up the stacks of books on my shelves, and sometimes, you'd be reading my journals. I never managed to get over the fact that when you left, I was a person that makes me embarrassed when some fleeting memories stream in my head.

   Last time I saw you in real life, all I’d wished to do was saying goodbye, even though nobody knew it would be the last, not even you, and not me, just my heart. But you know, it wasn’t really worth it, it came up too awkwardly. Years later, I learnt that ends are overrated, the final chapter in a novel is not the best; it’s the one that comes  before it. When I learnt that I’d never see you again, I cried,  I pushed myself into it, it was inadequate not to cry. I knew You never left, you were there. Always there. Hidden between those strings of night, breathing within the folds of my brain.

  I never knew how diluted is the effect my memory holds on the sight of you. But today I knew that;  I saw you again. The chance represented itself to me to finally have a mutual conversation with you. But we didn’t talk because you never knew I was there. I was stoned in my place. I couldn’t move, not a step and couldn’t breathe. But when I did move, it was the other way….I feared you wouldn’t be like the you I’d created. 

Heat

This is a Magpie Tale

A hazy vision tells me I’ve finally opened my eyes. I am soaked with sweat, from head to toe, and all the time last night I’ve been dreaming I was drowning. I don’t look at my torn watch lying on the next to my bed, I forget to do so, or I just got too used to not knowing time. Days feel like sand grains slipping through your fingers without being able to tell which was Sunday and which was Friday; or maybe like a desert with no landmarks telling you where exactly you are. At least my days are like this. I am still paralyzed in my bed, I am still drowning in the heat.

   The air conditioner is not working. My clothes are sticking to my skin and I can’t feel myself anymore. I need to breathe and I can’t tell whether the air has been sucked out my lungs by summer or by my heart. I am still confused. I forget to breathe. Breathe, Try to breathe. One tear escapes my eyes. I want to cry more but I can’t. I try to pull the tears out, but it seems like sweating consumed all the water within me. Summer has sucked the life out of me. No. Do not think like this. Maybe I am exaggerating, but I still can’t breathe.

   I open the window and stand. Behind translucent windows lives go on. I am the an audience of one to that theatre of life in which the fourth wall has been brought to the ground. A mother is shouting at her daughter. Two couples are fighting. Someone is talking on the phone. Do they realize someone is there seeing them?  It strikes me as peculiar.

   In my bedroom, I turn the T.V on. Was the idea of movies inspired by that person watching you behind his window? All holds no interest to me. Many times a fleeting thought of my life turning into a movie crosses my mind. And I wonder, do we follow the order of begging-climax-end?  No we do not. What if they create a story about someone, much like everyone else, much like myself, who wakes up, lives, sleeps? And in between, there are those moments, those scenes, that begin with the eye sand crystallize in the heart then reflect on the face; moments detached from everything, moments that last no longer than a moment. Things happen in life, major events you might want to call them; movie-makers kill the moments and focus on the days, forcing that second line of thought which has no relation with events, the one that comes from the self to fade. When someone dies, and his wife is mourning, won’t she notice if a woman wearing red blouse and green skirt passes by her in the street? Won’t that second line of thought even force a hint of marvel at her heart before her surroundings sink in again drowning trivial things away. They’d never capture that part in a movie, it has no influence on the plot.

   I fill the bathtub with water, icy water, then strip myself out of clothes. Hesitance pulls me back for a second. At first, I let one leg touch the water, then throw myself in, all of me in. It stings at first, but then I get used to it. I close my eyes and pretend it’s winter again. 

Lucidity

“Marcus”

“Yes dear”

“I think I started hearing the violins in my head again”

   I am in my old living room, I realize as I glance around the place. For some reason, everything is in black in white. My vision is hazy and I remember that when it happened, I had just woken up from sleep. Mom is standing, all dressed, and holding the door knob. I say something I cannot now recollect, then she closes the door behind her saying she is going to the market. She never came back.

  Me and Marcus are on the airplane. Everything is going down in ruins. Our hands are clasped tightly until I get this numbness in it that makes me think it broke into his. Amidst the screams, I recognize my grandpa’s voice singing to me “Come Josephine in My Flying Machine” with his usual enthusiasm. A wide smile is all I can see out of his face. Years later, I come to the conclusion that me and Marcus survived, just like that. I remember the crash and I look at us, we are here, which means we are not dead.

  I keep on searching for that shoes under the bed. There are stacks of shoes there but not the one I want. I am in hurry, Tim Perrson asked me out; only I can’t remember where that pair of shoes is. He is standing outside with his olive-green jacket. I can’t find it. I can’t find it. Beads of perspiration cover my forehead and fall on my eyes. They are blinding me and I can’t see through them. Tim left and went away.

   On the deck of that ship, I stand before a creased version of me. It’s stormy and everyone is panicking, but I’m not. I search for me and she’s too frightened. When I approach, I find out she’s my mother. I want to talk but then I step on something and I realize it’s the pair of shoes.

   I hear the violins again. My head rests against a brick wall. Beside me, is someone. I can’t see his face but the comfort he radiates is enough for me to stay. I am in love with that person, only I don’t know who he might be. I am drowning in the stormy sea. He is with me.

  Years ago, when I was five and mom left, I said in a voice low as a whisper for I had just woken up, “ How can you tell when you are not dreaming.”

She stood for a second and looked my way. “You can’t,” she said

  

One Beautiful Thing

The street lights bounced up and down before my eyes as they entangled with darkness of the night. Within my hands I carried you silently as we melted together into the streets.

I wondered what time it was? Was it today, or yesterday. Was it a year ago? It was just One day, I woke up with my watch broken down; I never got to fix it though, it was that one day when I discovered you grew within me to forever invade my alones. I hated you then, hated you with all the hatred my heart had been capable of. Then, I was too weak to hate you, so helplessly felt you in my body. That was the day I forever lost sense of time.

I sat on the sidewalk. Where to go? I had already shuffled through the places but a stinging pain within my chest told me all the doors were closed. I thought of many names; every name I’d known and beyond each face, there was a memory that bloomed within my heart and somehow the feeling of those past days brushed upon me. I smiled. Once, I smiled. My eyes fell on you and that smile froze, like the very fact of you in here killed away all my happiness, like you drew  a barrier between now and whoever I was before you came.

That night they got you out of me, you almost killed me. But I didn’t give a damn, you’d kill me anyway, I thought. Maybe when I decided to  hate you, it was me that I should’ve hated. None of that would make any difference…which left me wondering, is it soothing that feeling of letting go, or did it only hurt to know you’ve left something behind. You were that point of gravity standing at the heart of my life, and no matter how many years separated our departure, you always attracted regret to engulf the memory of you.

I sat on a sidewalk. Your eyes slowly opened for me to look at them and see they were mine. You even stole the only thing beautiful about my face. You saw me and went on crying. I rocked you but then you started a strain of screams. I rocked you again and you wouldn’t stop.

“Shut up,” I yelled, “just shut up!”

You screamed.

“Oh please  stop”

I too cried.

“Stop. Stop. Stop!”

But you wouldn’t stop.

You wouldn’t stop.

I then threw you on the sidewalk and ran away from your taunting voice not giving myself a second chance to see your face again. It might’ve changed everything.

I never had any babies again. And every time I pressed my hands against my tummy, I felt  the emptiness of my womb creating a shield around my life rendering it too empty. I loved you now. I missed you and hung on you every hope that my life should once again have a hint of a meaning. Maybe it was because you were unattainable.

Few days later, I came back asking for you. It wasn’t hard to inquire about the poor newborn baby who was left alone crying by a heartless mother. I learnt that someone picked you up and drove you to an orphanage and few weeks later, you were picked up by a family.

I saw you again. You were all theirs.

But you still had my eyes,

The only beautiful thing about me.

Would you forgive me?