Don't Despair

When you are given a moment knowing you will never get it back

My dear [ Don't despair ]

When you covet all, when you bare all

And you find no one waiting for you at the finish line

[ Don't despair ]

When warmth only comes your way

staccato

in between octaves of unbearable winter

My precious [ Don't despair ]

When your vanity gets so

That you no longer take your unfiltered reflection to be your God given appearance

[ Don't despair ] 

When the ache in your chest gets so

That you feel your ribcage strain under the pressure

[ Don't despair ] 

When your heart sings songs of intoxicated dances and stolen kisses that no one else hears 

Carry it on your sleeve

And [ Don't despair ]

When your soles bleed from traveling a tortuous spiked path

And you find yourself sans savior

[ Don't despair ]

When stasis has stamped and sealed your story

When you are surrounded by milestones and achievements

And you content and complacent

Perhaps then you may feel the urgency to despair

And yet...

[ Don't despair ]

Because all this is temporary 

Listen to me darling, all this is not real

A day will come when you are no more incarcerated in the cells of your mind

The day when death assails, you will be set free  

[ Don't despair ] because the day you die is the day your children and grandchildren will despair for you

In a night where moon betrays her lover the sky, 

Your spirit will whisper to them in their sleep

Steadily 

Re-assuredly

" My sweet don't despair" 

 [ Don't despair ]

Don't despair ]

Don't despair.

[  ]

Le Mal Du Pays - Rene Magritte

She Sleeps So Still (Ode to My Grandmother)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRAI87PbX8c

Mahmoud Darwish once wrote: " Death does not hurt the deceased, death only hurts the living"

I wonder what he would write, if he knew what kind of soul has recently joined the rows of the deceased:



While our mortal voices wailed over your departure

Angels rejoiced in your arrival

While we bathed your corpse into an immaculate state

Your spirit had already been rinsed of its sins

As we lowered your regal shroud into the hallow depths of this Arabian land 

Where no light enters

You frolic around in your restored youthful self

 In the brightest Gardens of Eden.

They bruised your chest as they were frantically trying to shock you back to life

But you had already made your grand exodus

Your energy released back into the arms of the universe

Those who saw you after you've been cleansed, scented, and shrouded in white

Said there were no adjectives in the Arabic language

That could describe what laid to rest before them

So they called you a bride, a queen, a cherubic angel

Because even as you were cold and still

You only emitted warmth from your lips

Even in your lifelessness

You only looked as if you were sleeping

You made it look so temporary

As if you'd awaken any moment now from your slumber.



I shook you

I screamed your name

I pressed my ear against your ribcage

I lifted your eyelids to be sure

Empty shrunken pupils met my gaze

I let my tears fall on your face

And to no avail

No trace of a light

No trace of a life.



How is it, that just mere hours ago you bid me good morning

And now I'm lying next to you on a hospital bed

Embracing you, kissing you

Only this time, you did not reciprocate

I bid you the worst of farewells

Only now, you did not return the gesture.





What a worthless life

What an absurd existence

How trivial and painfully insignificant worldly concerns now seem

When you lose your best friend of 22 years

When you part with the woman you called "mama" until you took your first steps

All that time, it was she who filled the emotional void when your father passed away

So you never felt incomplete whatsoever

Every time she would let me examine her, she'd chuckle and say:

" It was only yesterday that I was changing your diapers and now you're a doctor! "

Constantly reassuring she would be there to see me graduate

Every time I studied for exams into the darkness of the night

She would be there too, keeping me company

Making sure I was never alone.



And if ever I had felt streaks of loneliness    before

Now I am the most lonely

If ever I had asked God why tragedies must always befall my family

Now I understand that the world is divided into uneven destinies

If ever I had wondered about a latent void within that refused to be filled

Now I am certain it was in preparation for this cursed day

If ever there was any one person who knew how to contain my occasional emptiness

She is gone. She no longer is

In turn, my emptiness permanent

And my doubted tragedy

Definite.

Forever Loved
26.6.2014

Gratitude

A Douleur Exquise laden self

Has blurred my vision for some time now

On the beauty of the exterior world

Which I have always taken for granted 

I didn't realize how physiology could affect psychology 

Until I replaced shallow breaths for deeper ones

I didn't appreciate how essential water is to life

Until I swam in the Gulf Sea feeling like my throat might be slit from the burning brine

Ive always resented metropolitanism in the city

Until yesterday, when I strolled along the corniche, lecture notes in hand, marveling at how far Man has come

That these very edifices that we loathe for breeding consumerism 

Are also the enduring symbol of unwavering drive and ambition mankind possesses 

I didn't necessarily value modernity and how easy daily life has gotten

Until my grandmother told the story of how a midwife ripped open her cervix sans anesthesia 

To make room for her first newborn 

Then proceeded to pour hard liquor over her diffuse and vascular wound so it wouldn't fester 

All of this, while she was fully conscious

And yet...

I greet each day the same 

Dear Lord, thank you for blessing me with all the following that you defiantly condemn: 

Thank You for bestowing upon me belief in Your omnipotence 

Simultaneously coupled with a greater tendency to deviate from Your doctrine 

Thank You for heightening my senses to such an acute degree 

That the older I get, the more difficult it becomes to find a suitable mold

To accommodate my disproportionate pieces 

Thank You for the ability to tell the good apart from the evil

Only to predispose me to the rolling dices of ill-intention and desire to harm another person 

Thank You for the gift of autonomy and self-governance 

Yet having every decision and every action devoid of Divine intervention 

Thank You for the abundance of acquaintances and friends and family

With a cave's echo of resonant loneliness 

Thank You for the overflowing capacity to love

With no one to love

Thank You for my somewhat physically attractive veneer

To repress all the insecurities, the batshit crazy, and most of all the hollow lack of self-dignity 

Thank You for stealing my father away from me when I was 7

That in my frantic search for another man to take his place 

I placed worthless pieces of shit on a paternal pedestal

So they had no choice but to look down on me

Lastly, thank You for laying me down to sleep every night

And making sure, that every damn day, I am still alive

Breathing

Waking up as the reflection of an infernal demoness

Donning a mask of cherubic innocence

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

This is how I was created

And this is how to Him I shall return. 

تناقضات

( عقل تعود الكتابة بالأجنبية يجرب الخربشة بالعربية لأول مرة...عذراً مسبقا على أي أخطاء)

في ظل الفساد تتفاقم العبادات
و مع الرقابة الفكرية تنشل الانسانية
ما أصبح الفرق اﻵن
بين محكمة جنائية و محكمة إلهية
الا مخيلة واسعة
كل واحد منهم يحسب نفسه منزل من عند ربه
فقط لكونه مبجل لدى عشيرته 
تكرر الفتوى
كالأسعار بسوق الخضرة
و تلك العقول النامية تمتصها من غير تصفية
حقيقة، ما هي توقعاتك
من قوم أطاحوا بالجاهلية
فقط ليتخذوا عقلية جاهلة
سئمنا تناقضات
ناس حافية الأقدام تحارب غير خاشية المهازيم
و ناس على الشرفات تحتسي القهوة و تقرأ الفناجين
عقول تنادي بالحرية و العلمانية و الشفافية
و أخرى تناسبها ركعات محسوبة و مواعظ مقلوبة و تحرشات جنسية
اسألني عن أصلي و فصلي و سأروي لك الحكاية
من بداية الى نهاية
لكن أرجوك لا تحدثني عن نظريات داروينية أو ماركسية
و اسألني عن عقيدتي و سوف أتلو لك أي سورة بكل قراءاتها المختلفة
لكن من فضلك لا تكلمني عن عهد عبد الناصر
و معنى القومية العربية

The Arabs

We used to be mighty
Now we wear servility on our sleeves
We used to be savvy
Until we traded Abdel Nasser for Mursi
We used to be scientists and academics
But lately, ignorance has enveloped us like a slow setting disease
Our historical timeline was so diverse!
There was that one time we warded off crusaders
That other time we were vagabonds in deserts
And then that time again when we became reputed businessmen & traders

We used to be innovators
Look at us now
A bunch of sorry imitators 
How does that happen to a people that had once established a House of Wisdom?

They're under the false impression that their Spring 
Will restore their long-lost title as kings
But so far it's proven to be nothing but a mourning ring
Grown, virile men weeping over their brothers & fathers
The most revered figure of resistance has become "The Martyr" 
Mothers dig tiny holes to serve as graves
For their cherubic, now lifeless, babes

We used to be united under the umbrella of one faith
No one thought we'd ever see the day
When bombs doubled as calls to prayer
And religious paradigmatic heroes morphed into slayers

Ours is a tale of sordid rise and fall
But mostly falls
In this feat, it is safe to say we have surpassed all
It's ok, don't look so annoyed
We can still reminisce about our enduring magnificent past
On our one-way ticket out of this place
With our foreign passports 

#LifeofaMuslimFeminist

After an evanescent period of epiphany and two splendid literary pieces

I find myself yet again 

Returning to the place where sun rays do not disseminate into creases

I keep wondering, day in, day out

What it means to be a woman

In a day and age

Where some cunts are pierced

While others are mutilated by matrons on the streets

Where menstruals arrive

Like a death sentence

Nine months are spent in hope and anticipation

That the fetus within 

Will be rightly "equipped"

For his patriarchal coronation

Which is sure to be a most joyous occasion

Accompanied by shrieking unanimous ululations 

Legs are spread wide open

The doctor announces “It’s a girl”

Never mind progress here

You know that at least a part of her character, if not all, will be stolen

Why do we have to choose between being Muslims and being feminists?

My back can no longer withstand the load

Of bearing titles such as a “libertine atheist”

All because I refuse to believe that this faith

This faith of MINE

Erects pedestals of righteousness

For men who only think with their erections

They keep violently imposing on me

A disillusioned faith

That is measured

By what covers my hair and the top of my waist

I want

No I NEED

More heroic religious shes

And maybe just a little less festering beards

You see, in my Utopia of broken dreams

Faith is as what is chanted by whirling Sufis

They say, “Ours is not a caravan of despair”

They say, “Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again”

I am a woman

I am a Muslim

I am a feminist

Come, walk a mile in my shoes

Then I wonder if you’ll keep fictionalizing my burdens and struggles

Which I have long ago learned to live with and accept

As my eternally damned truths.

Sarah Maple "Badass Muslimahs"

Spoken Word: Internet Killed the ..... (Fill in Blank)

We live in a world

Where vines matter over minds

Where the number of likes you get on a picture

Validates your existence as a worthy creature

I got over 500 friends on my profile

But only about two I can count on in real life

My mind processes sceneries in a filter

My wandering ideas are condensed into 140 characters

Oh, and I mustn’t forget to include hashtags

That shit makes you automatically cooler

But hey, at least I have a solid fanbase on Twitter

That will listen

And not be passive

Because you know, it always feel like I’m communicating to masses

Talking and giving my LOUD opinion

In a silent cyber dominion

All without muttering a sound

And yet, I long to speak mounds

I wish to vocalize my shriveling sentiments

Not drown in an ocean of typed detriment

I am feeling something right now

That I wish to express to someone on the other line

Wait, but I MUST summarize

In that one categorical emoticon

All those ineffable facial lines

That formed on my face

While my words were mechanically being spaced

 Because nowadays emotions ought to be like their online counterparts

Accepted and bought

Rather than interpreted into abstract thought

God forbid

Your behavior should match your complex anatomy

You’ll risk those vultures hovering over you

Trying to pin you down with an abnormality

We live in a world

Where you touch to activate your devices

You don’t take your mama’s advices

But will share a quote that’s saying the same thing

To look as if you’re redeeming your vices

Fast- forward in time

Hey look it’s your funeral

The godly man is reciting words from the Holy Book

Not surprisingly, he is overlooked

People heard there was free Wifi

They’re all trying to find a connection

So they can post their condolences and sorry affections

On your Facebook wall

That apparently still bloody lives on

While your flesh rots

Congratulations

 It seems that in your time well-spent on earth

You’ve really had all your personal relationships mastered

You lucky bastard.

Paul Delvaux, The Deposition (1951)