Category: Bits & pieces of everything

It’s been six month. My God, it’s been six months and not one single step closer to justice.

Have you seen the photos of the mothers? The mothers carrying the photos of their sons and daughters, who have been killed ruthlessly by the behemoth hands of beasts?

How can they sleep at night? Knowing these mothers cannot breathe? How can they go on with their lives when a mother desperately gives in to the fact that her child has died for no reason, and still no one wants to explain to her why. 

Could you go on, explain to her? Explain to her why the sun does not shine anymore and why she now throws away the remaining of her pot of stew. Forgive her; she is still not used to making lesser portions; she still makes some extra for her son, who they murdered.

She makes his bed every morning even though it remains untouched at night. Forgive her; she refuses to believe that no one sleeps on this bed anymore. She refuses to believe that her child is no longer her child but is a child of the Earth, his ashes still buried under the rubbles on a hot August day.

What do you tell her when she walks towards the silos for the first time in six months and searches for her son? She knows, she’s not crazy, she knows he is not there, she knows he is long dead, and he cannot even hear her wails, but what do you tell her when she impulsively walks searching for her son, to tug him back to sleep at night?

I read on the Legal Agenda that a little boy is planning on making a ladder so tall that it reaches the sky, so he can visit his father up in heaven whenever he wants. What do you tell this boy? How can you tell him that that wherever his dad is, he will not be able to reach him?

You’d think it gets easier with time. If It’s not easier on us, the privileged ones who got away with only seeing their beloved city on the grounds, how will it ever get easier on the victims’ families?

And the murderers still sleep in gold-plated king-sized beds and breathe the same air we breathe. How can they sleep? How can they breathe the same air as the families of victims and still sleep?

My head hurts. I am trying to lower my caffeine consumption, especially with coffee, so I didn’t have any today, and I feel so sleepy, and my head hurts, waiting for the painkillers to do their job.

Hello, how are you? Has it really been 17 days since the full lockdown started? How are you coping? I can’t imagine it being easy, especially if you’re really committed to the lockdown and not leaving the house.

I can’t say I am very much affected by the lockdown so far; the first week of lockdown (and me testing negative), I spent the whole week in the mountains, and during last week I was spending the afternoons with my friend at her house every day or two, so this is keeping me a bit sane. I’ve had my share of 21 days in a single room, I want to breathe.

I don’t know how people are coping, really. People from my community, who live off a daily income, how do you expect them to choose starvation over the virus? It’s almost impossible. You take the loaf of bread out of the hands of a poor man and then wonder why he cries.

I pity my community, so poor and fragile as if it’s walking on eggshells. How do they survive? I ask myself. How do they eat when it’s been 17 days of complete lockdown and little to no aid from the government or non-governmental organizations? My God, How do they eat?

I think it’s unfair to exploit people’s weakest moments for the sake of promotion, but the WFP TVC during Ramadan was a stab in the gut. In case you didn’t see it, it was a mother telling her little boy a bedtime story about a rabbit and that it is okay to sleep on an empty stomach because she could not afford food, and she didn’t want to tell him.

Even remembering this brings tears to my eyes; how were they even able to shoot this? Can you even imagine thousands of mothers having to hug their children to sleep with an empty stomach?

And here I am, coffee deprived with a headache and very tired, tired of what? Of luxuries? Why is life so cruel? Why does any child ever have to be hungry? Why does any child have to be deprived of food and toys, and life?

Sometimes all this is just too unfair.

I’m going to make myself a cup of coffee.

I was never a Charles Bukowski fan. Maybe because I thought he is overrated, a name used on Tumblr photos and social media posts, people using a famous name to reflect a vague virtual knowledge, or maybe because his poems don’t rhyme, and I love my poems to be always rhyming. Still, I never gave much attention to him.

Lately, he has been recommended by more than one friend, and I’ve been reading some of his best poems, and I must say, he can be good. It’s different when you read something that is a friend’s “favorite,” it has a different feeling, and there is a higher possibility you’ll like it only because it is a dear friend’s favorite.

Today, I stumbled upon another poem of his: Bluebird. It hit differently, much stronger darkness than I anticipated. I’m not sure if it’s because I heard it before I read it that it has a louder voice, or if it’s because the words are loud enough on their own, but the poem is screaming at me.

As I read it, it hurt me. It’s so personal. To me, it was so obvious that the bluebird is anxiety and depression; the bluebird symbolizes the darkness that Bukowski feels and the many attempts (whiskey, cigarettes, whores, and bartenders) he tries to keep it inside him. Because he knows that people won’t accept him if it’s out, his book sales in Europe will be affected, and if he let himself feel, it will mess him up.

But as I read through the video comments, the commenters had different opinions; they did not relate the bluebird with anxiety and depression. Some said it is innocence, true self, freedom, soul, and even vulnerability.

It struck me that each individual affiliated the bluebird with what they fear most, the thing they fear to show. To some, it’s the liberation of sorrow, and to others, it’s the liberation of life. When I first heard it, I thought it’s beautiful, but when I read people’s analysis, I fell in love.

I love feeling things I read, and bluebird is one of them.

For the video narration of the poem: Bluebird by Charles Bukowski

For the full poem:

There’s a bluebird in my heart
That wants to get out but I’m too tough
I say: “Stay in there
I’m not going to let anybody see”
There’s a bluebird in my heart
That wants to get out but I pour whiskey
I take a cigarette so the whores
The bartenders, the grocery clerks
Never know that he is in there
There’s a bluebird in my heart
That wants to get out but I’m too tough
I say: “Stay down
Do you wanna mess me up?
Do you wanna screw up all of my works?”
There’s a bluebird in my heart
That wants to get out but I’m too clever
I only let him out at night sometimes
When everybody sleeps
I say: “I know that you’re there
Don’t be so sad, ” that’s what I said
Then I put him back but he’s always singing
I don’t let him die and we sleep together
Like that with our secret pact
It’s nice enough to make a little man weep
But I don’t weep, do you?
It’s nice enough to make a little man weep
But I don’t weep, do you?
There is a bluebird messing with my heart
What should I do with this little bird?
There is a bluebird messing with my heart
What could I do with this little bird?
I’m turning into a bird, I’m turning into a bird
So I will fly with this melancholy

Charles Bukowski

I started writing this on Monday during a work break. I didn’t continue writing as the day got busy and I chose to go back to work. Later that day I went out with very dear friends who make me laugh from the bottom of my heart. I obviously can’t finish this either, but sharing:

(Also LOL on planning a day in the sun for Friday)

The last Monday of 2020, and I’m sitting in my office on a day where I was supposed to be working from home, but voluntarily chose to show up, and I’m listening to Edge of Desire by John Mayer, so obviously I’m feeling idyllic and very much in love.

It’s ironic, right? I voluntarily woke up at 6:30 am, and I was at the office an hour earlier than 9:00 am my working hour, and I was the only person here for hours before Feras came in, and now Radwan and Walaa. This is all on a Monday and a few days before the end of the remarkable 2020.

I’m planning a nice day in the sun for Friday,

I’ve written the first sentence of this and erased it three times now, and not because it’s too hard or because I don’t have anything to say, it’s just that I can’t find a main idea for this to focus on.

Like, I want to tell you about the fact that I was smiling to myself today for absolutely no reason, and I want to tell you that I walked this morning to work. It was so refreshing and dark, and it started raining while at the office, and it was cold, which is probably why I was smiling all day long to myself, but I don’t know how to put it.

I’m so content this Christmas, I’m so happy with the impact we are making, and I’m grateful for the people around me. I’m always feeling this wholesome around Christmas, but this year is different, I guess.

I haven’t been feeling lonely for a while, the loneliness that has haunted me my whole life. For the first time I ever, I don’t feel as lonely; I don’t feel like I’m carrying mountains on my shoulders alone. The loneliness, it’s still there, but it’s not as severe as it has always been,

I’m changing; I know I am. It is so bizarre, but the way I feel and think has changed in a few months; I feel like I grew up ten years from May until this day; it’s insane how much my views and feeling and the way I see everything have changed dramatically. I’m not sure if what I’m feeling is temporary bliss, but it’s a new thing, and for the first time, I’m okay with a new thing.

Does it have to do with somebody? Something? Someplace? It might, and I might have the answer to all of this, but I won’t admit it to myself, let alone to you, and it might be a temporary bliss that will soon leave me aching. (but I’m trying so hard not to think about this)

But for the first time in years, I’m not trying to get away. I do not feel like escaping; I suddenly don’t want to run away. Suddenly, I want to stay here, with you, in this coldness, and this darkness, and this mysterious feeling of hopelessness and relevance at the same time.

Suddenly, I am looking at people and sigh with relief at how beautiful they are. I am smiling as my heart is so full of loving them. For the first time in many years, I do not want to run away; I want to stay here.