Heartbroken

It hurts in the morning, it hurts when I go to sleep. It hurts to think I might be lying somewhere dead and he would know nothing about it. It hurts when I know where he is and I can't see him, can't touch him. It hurts to think the world of him when I am nothing to him.

I am nothing.

It hurts to hear his lies, and repeat them all over again. It hurts to suspect he's a jerk, and then know for sure he's a jerk, and all I can do is to be helplessly captivated by his charm. It hurts to trace any news about him, to calculate your every past word and move, and know you can't undo them. And it's not exactly like undoing them will get him to love you.

It hurts to blame yourself for feelings you have no control over. It hurts to think you might end up all alone till the end of your days, deprived of his kindness, deprived of his wit, deprived of his humour.

It hurts to breathe when you're heartbroken.

Barista

It was not just a cup of espresso, indeed it never is. I took an immediate liking of him, with his warm inviting smile and friendly green eyes. Of course, only a barista welcoming a new customer to the tiny coffeehouse in which he works.

The espresso was irresistible, just the right amount and not too bitter or "burned". I went again for some take-away cups. I soon got tired of spilling it all over my clothes and smelling weird, so I though of having it there, with him.

I must have acted weird, he must have been intimidated or embarrassed, as I sat there looking directly at him waiting to ask him for the bill. He did not look up though he knew I was looking, but I thought I saw him glancing at me from the reflection of the glass. What is it? Is it the absolute joy of sipping espresso? Is it his welcoming manner? Is it his eyes, strong arms and huge smile? What is it? Have I been crushed by everyday life for so long that I almost forgot moments like this? Is it a longing for warmth, comfort and satisfaction? Is it more?

The Guilt

I am emotionally unable to deal with the pain of the revolution; the murder of protesters. Protesters and bystanders alike were killed in cold blood by the Egyptian police in all ways you would imagine the cruellest. Obviously the regime thought it could quell the protests and, perhaps in an act of revenge at their failure, proceeded to fire rubber bullets, live ammunition and intentionally hit and run protesters with various vehicles.

Why people have to suffer, bleed and die for me to live, I don't understand. I survived the 18-day protests and sit-ins unscathed, and I feel I have not provided enough for this blessed revolution. Indeed, this revolution is so blessed that nothing short of our lives could possibly be presented to it. I don't deserve having someone die for me. Why did they have to suffer for us to regain our dignity? The revolution is now at stake, what if I one day realise that the dead have gone down the drain? Will I not wish I had been dead too?

Only I am not dead, and I am not alive. I am in some sort of limbo where I fell after the initial euphoria of success has worn off. I do understand cruelty is inherent and I will have to bear it the rest of my fucking life, when I or someone else faces it. In the case of the revolution, it was a collective dream and a collective goal. In my world this means we either live to see it all happen or die together, but this half-way reality is depressing me.

Doing the Maths

One skill I am proud of having acquired during my four years of career life is how to manage my budget. I have mostly been underpaid, but I have also convinced myself that it doesn't matter because I do not have many expenses anyway, and if ever I shall be in need I have a ceiling above me and enough food in the fridge. Provided by my bankers provided by nature, of course, mom and dad.

Seeing the pattern in which my salary has increased, stayed steady or plummeted in these years, I am amazed. I unexpectedly have an affluence of money on me during the time I most need it. I remember a couple of years ago when I had to take a lot of expensive medications and I remember clearly that I didn't borrow from my parents any of their costs. I also had enough money to buy a mobile phone and share in my laptop. Say I didn't need this money at this time, I would have spent it foolishly. And if I didn't have it, I would have been miserable. Praise the Lord.

However, in recent months I've been inexplicably intent on calculating every penny that comes and goes. I have taken a new interest in Mathematics, probably my most hateful subject for me as a child, young adult and adult etc. Whenever I am, and at all times I find myself reaching out to a calculator (at one time begging for one at a hypermarket. The woman I asked turned out to be a foreigner and could understand naught, gratefully) and calculating one thing or another, either how much I will save, how much the raise might be, any surprising bonuses (how I can actually calculate a surprise bonus is beyond me, so don't ask), birthdays, travels etc.

As a rule I now save 20% of my stable salary, and 50% of bonuses if I don't need the money. I hurry off to the bank and stack it there before I venture to City Stars or any of the glitzy places where you usually empty your pocket and your soul and fill your carrying bags. Having reached this pact with myself, I still spend hours on end every day calculating, calculating, calculating. I now understand why wealthy people have heart attacks and depression. It's not that I am worried or care too much about making more money, but for some reason I am obsessed with it. I wonder if this is contradictory. I am saying I do not care because I have this strict policy of avoiding consumerism and stacking my shelves with trendy clothes, shoes, accessories and make-up I know I will not use. Not only will I not use them, but also I do not really need them. It's tiring, I should do the Maths once a month on average, not thirteen times a day. But I'm probably just avoiding what I should be doing: working.

Quarter life crisis - Part One

She: I want to plan your 50th surprise birthday party.

I: Why the 50th?

She: I don't know. Because it will be such a big day.

I: I think my 40th will be a lot more fun. I will either be married with children and depressed, or unmarried and depressed, so I will adopt a two-year-old girl and a stray dog.

Traffiphobia

I have lately taken the conscious decision not to learn driving and therefore never to drive around Cairo for the sake of the barefoot children and the beautiful furry creatures in the streets.

I never really found driving any titillating at all in a city where the average speed has dropped to 20 kph on most roads. I look around and wonder how there are so many cars and too much poverty. And when you look inside cars, there is only a driver and four empty seats, which creates a traffic mess. Of course, this wouldn't have been the case had there been decent public transportation. But public buses are either too crowded, too late, or too full of perverts. These reasons are undeniable, but there's a deeper lurking reason yet. Most middle-class and upper-class Egyptians wouldn't use public transportation as it would seem demeaning and scandalous. It's like descending the social scale, somehow, because you don't get to pay using a Visa card.

Most of my friends and colleagues drive, and they're always going on about how nerve-wrecking, back-breaking and heartbreaking driving is. I am usually easily offended, so I can as well do away with more stress, thank you very much.

Instead, I just like to hop in taxis. I have always hated taxi drivers and viewed them as bloodsucking mosquitoes until I read Khaled El-Khamissi's larger than life book; Taxi. It was a total paradigm shift. The book does not make any attempt to either disparage or glamourise them, it simply chronicles incidents that are real to the point of smacking you in the face. So, following the author's footsteps, I would sometimes engage in a chit chat with drivers, waiting to hear an unembellished truth about any given subject. Of course I also started the conversation once because the driver was a Jason Statham look-alike.

It is annoying to have to beg for ten taxis to take me home though it is ridiculously close to work, but I will be buying my comfort and instead enjoy watching the comic Egyptian streets in every ride. Moreover, I have acquired a hint of fierceness through the years, which should make taxi rides safer.

Marriages Gone Wrong

Having witnessed at point-blank range varying levels of stupidity when it comes to getting married, I am compelled to write a blogpost, to console myself above anything else. I have learnt, among other unfortunate things during my twenty-something years that people are capable of actually ruining their lives and then look back and blame it on everyone except themselves.

Stupid Friend 1 got married to someone who had, during their so-called relationship, demeaned her and her family. He happily went on with his life when they broke up, but she kept calling him, and calling him, and begging him to marry her, risking to give many of her legal rights in the process. She went ahead and married him eventually, and for the sake of my sanity I won't try to imagine how there life will be like.

Stupid Friend 2, no REALLY Stupid Friend 2, already noticed during her engagement her beau's shortcomings, so did her dad, but they went on with the marriage anyway, akin to Really Stupid Friend's bizarre behaviour and off-the-handle mood swings. Not surprisingly, her mood swings turned to tornadoes after marriage, and she's now back in her dad's home, with a hapless child in tow.

Despite the different circumstances in which both marriages took place, I can see a similarity between them; a desparate avoidance of social stigma. It is a shame to be unmarried, so I could just throw myself in any pitfall, better than ending up alone. I cannot understand their mindsets. Whatever happened to common sense? How can ruining you life, and bringing into the world an innocent fatherless child be so common? I know, it's always desire. Even where they do not want to admit this, they were just seeking sexual gratification. Of course I am not disparaging this, I am just wondering what they thought they'd be doing for the rest of their lives when sex would no longer be fun.

I have heard someone say this over the radio and I will keep remembering it in case my friends' stupidity becomes contagious. Loneliness is better than bad company. Looking at my friends' choices now, I thank the gracious heavens that I am single. And if no one should prove worthy of my company, I know that I have enough self-confidence and sanity to do everything which marriage and lactation does not allow me.

Random virtues of growing up

With age comes confidence, at least to most people.
1) Yesterday I passed randomly by some government employees. As usual they were eating lebb. (For shame, what does lebb mean in English? Pulp?) I said salamo aleko but then I looked again, not because I was offended they were fusing leisure with supposed work, but because I usually get the where-are-you-going question. They soon burst into laughter, probably out of embarrassment. Now winding back to ten years ago, I would wonder what the hell is wrong with my t-shirt, or the way I walk, or my salamo aleko, and walk home in tears.

2) You realise that Titanic is also about gender inequality, class conflict and major script failures on the part of Cameron, and not just the touch-me-in-steamy-car love plotline.

3) The more you lose people through death or other more cruel means, the more you appreciate who you have now.

Cruel Summer

I will likely spend a most cruel summer. One friend who had been staying temporarily in Egypt is going back to his country for good, another friend is getting married and will be spending a good part of the summer away, and a third is also spending a month abroad. I am left with the stabbing pain of departure, which none of the so-called social networks or words in an email will be able to cure. I will have to spend lonely mornings in bed marvelling at the swiss breakfasts and espressoes we had together, walk the busy streets of downtown alone, see my friend's face here, and hear a comment he made there. There is something absolutely viscious about relationships as you know that no matter what, all relationships end, sometimes leaving you wondering why it started in the first place. You keep trying to convince yourself that it may evolve into another kind of bond, but in reality all you are left with is memories of a past that is impossible to replay.

Aftershock

So my mum just told me "gatek el 2araf" because I refused to see a suitor who lives in UAE. I haven't tried living outside Egypt - but I can't imagine it. I can imagine staying for a few months, bearing disconnection from family, friends and familiar faces, only for a limited while. I am not one to think there is absoultely no hope in this country and that we should leave on the first one-way plane. Of course this may not be the only reason why millions of Egyptians have immigrated in the last fourty years. But many of my male friends have thought about it practically, and found out that by no means can they afford buying an apartment, a shabka (obligatory gold or diamond gift), bedrooms, living rooms etc when they earn say 200$ a month. I can't blame them and no one can, the air in Egypt smells of frustration.
Meanwhile, I am also thinking as unpractically as possible, and I believe that there is no way I can know a person well enough to get married to him through chatting or Facebook. And marriage is not a decision I am planning to be stupid about...it makes you or breaks you. The pressure from mum and dad has been on me ever since I graduated, and I know it will get more unbearble by the day. I am not going to tell mum I'm upset because first she knows it, and second I don't know if I'll be able to contain my anger. But I don't know what to do. I don't know how to handle the pressure in the coming years and at the same time strive to keep my sanity. Doesn't she realise that in this way she could one day push me to make a wrong decision? She prays to God and kneels to him tens of times a day, but still believes that I control who I am going to marry me, and specifically told me not to ruin my own destiny. I am not saying I have picked up proper matches in my life, but I am saying, please, don't make me feel like shit.

Down the drain

I really want to write about some personal stuff, after all this is why this blog was started more than four years ago - but does it matter? Does it matter that I have been reading the same book for five months as part of my attempts to write an MA...does it matter that after two or three years of this mess I still can't control my sleeping disorders (neither can my shrink)...does it matter that I realised the guy I have been having a crush on for a year and a half is in love, nay, deeply in love, with someone else?
Does it matter?

I hate seeing suitors with my sister because...

she interferes with what I wear although I specifically told her not to.
she rebukes me coz I can't find my lenses.
she suggests I wash the lenses with eye drops instead of the solution I ran out of.
she tells me to wear the lenses anyway though they hurt my eye and are unclean.
she yells at me for having to wear my eyeglasses instead.
she wouldn't tell me what the hell is wrong or unchic about wearing eyeglasses.
she asks me why the hell I am wearing the red pullover.
she tells me the pullover is old though I make it clear I only got it last year.
she asks me why I haven't worn the grey coat instead.
I feel sorry for myself when I realise that she is far less critical than my mother...

I'm lonely, lonely, lonely

I have been attacked by a mood that has for so long thankfully abandonned me. Generally speaking I am not a people person, and I shy away from people I don't know and always, always feel tense in public. A bit of paranoia added can complete the picture too.

I have struggled throughout my teenage years with loneliness. I would go to school filled up with a hope in a new day only to feel rejected and unwelcome. I made a group of friends during "high school" and at college I made yet another one and we're still like really thick, so feelings of loneliness now baffle me.

I usually have an insatiable appetite for new, interesting people, especially males, which is normal. However, I just feel unloved. I have this particular foreign friend and whereas I am not in, and should not, be in love with him, it just exasperates me feeling he is not as interested in me as I in him. I am used to a certain kind of attention. I just know that men are hopeless in tiny details and sweet gestures, but these would make me feel better. Again why I am expecting him to give me this kind of attention, I don't know.

Another problem is, I literally drool over every single interesting guy I meet. Just please drop me a comment and tell me this is normal. I have like, instant crushes with maybe ten people at the same time. The moment I see or meet anyone new I get all heated up and keep imagining how our "relationship" would go. I know this is typical loneliness. But I also know that even if I fall in love, I am not going to fall in love with a perfect man, and that any detail about other men will keep intriguing me. I might as well make a very bad wife.

I do have a hundred things to do to keep my mind away from all of this. Desperately searching for people I have met on FB or even in blogs won't work. I am aware that someone out there is probably searching for me as well, but until our wires meet, I will have to endure this.

Questions I hate and answers I'd love to give

X: So...what's new? Eih El Gedeed?
Me: Haven't you known! I'm running for president.

X: Ha...mafesh 7aga keda walla keda? (aka Any suitors yet?)
Me: Well...I'm as single as you are :@

X: Malek? (What's wrong?)
Me: Sorry...I just figured out that I will die one day...and that Palestine is still occupied.