When love breaks you down…

Yes … I was in love. I’m no ordinary person, and I have my own circumstances. The decision to be with somebody is not as simple for me as it is for other people. I loved her, and I tried to stop myself but to no avail. It seemed so real, so true that I close my eyes at night thinking about her, and open my eyes in the morning smiling at her face looming in the horizon from my window.

I know she loved me back, I could see it. She waited for me to take actions, she tried so hard to push me, but I was standing still, paralyzed as if my feet are made of stone. What do I say? how do I tell her that which can make it or break it. I didn’t speak and I stood watching my heart break and tears held refusing to come out. It was long and painful, and the pain I still have is like nothing I ever experienced in my life. But I couldn’t move … I did not recognize that I should have opened up or that I should have said it out loud. If she rejects it, it would have been better than how it all ended.

She gave up, she thought I was not interested. I pushed her away and she tried to stay close but I kept on pushing. She found someone who would take action and it is all over.

I looked at myself in the mirror, shaky as I was and my feet barely carrying me. Never again will I stand still. Never again will I be intimidated by my own circumstances. Nothing will stop me again from following my heart, no matter what the consequences might be. I was wrong, but it is too late. I learned from my life to look forward and to never look backwards. I will look forward and I know I will find my solace. Never again! NEVER damn it!

The Book

I have always wanted to be a writer. I want to write in English, but I’m not a native speaker and this makes it very difficult indeed. I have already started saving money for a writing course, and I think I can do it once I’m finished with my graduate studies which I hope would be towards the year’s end. 

I started a while ago writing a fiction novel. Not much is written so far, but I just took Daniel’s advise seriously after our get together in London, which was to dump everything on paper. The novel is some kind of a thriller drama, a genre which I’m not sure exists. It is usually this or that I think? Nevertheless I decided to go along with it, because perhaps I can invent my own genre, so here is hoping. Writing fiction, I have found, is a craft that can be learned. Of course you do need the talent, but I think this is what I have, and what I lack is the technical skill to do it. A writing course for me is then a good starting point to improve my skills. 

The novel has the general theme of how, as we all do, bump into each others in life changing each others perceptions of life. I particularly deal with a young man torn between east and west, and between common sense values and traditional inherited values. I particularly deal with how single events can have the butterfly effect on one’s life, all packed in a thriller that I hope to make page turning. This of course is not me as you would perhaps presume. But it is about me watching life from my own little corner, so it will be me, you and everyone else hitting into each others in life. I’m a believer that life is indeed stranger than fiction, wouldn’t you agree?

I have been reading a lot lately, mostly about belief, religion, and the human endeavor. But, in my last birthday one of the gifts I received was an Obama book “Dreams of my father” which was given to me but one of my European friends. I took no offense, for he sees me perhaps as a black person 🙂 while I’m not black, I’m actually brown (worse I think?). I’m now halfway through the book and I think it is vivacious, and a real good read. This Obama is a good man down at the bottom. No matter how he does during his term in office, he managed to gain my respect.

On another account, Swine flu is here in continental Europe, and I better be more careful because an infection would almost certainly kill me. My first precaution? I wear masks in public transport (I know, I know, I’m malleable). I do look funny since almost no one else is doing it, but I take it, I’m not like everyone else so I’d rather be more careful. It is serious, and although I asserted at Daniel’s blog that it will not infect Muslims 😛 I’m not however sure about agnostics! Wear your tin foil hats folks, the plague is here.

Cairo and back

I haven over the past 3 weeks been in Cairo. I’m always happy to see my family and friends, some of whom think I have turned Gay because I’m not yet married. While I was indeed married before once (for a few months really) I remain single at the moment, and this is for several reasons which I’m going to spare you. The annoyance surrounding unmarried guys at my age does in fact arise often in Egypt. And my friends who are married, and with no exception having miserable lives are always wondering why have I not been married yet? They are really suffering in very bad relations and stagnant marriages and yet, they just tell me “get married” as if it is some kind of revenge they are pulling on my person. My reply is standard, I just tell them to fix their miserable lives and then comeback and preach marriage when fixing is indeed done. A bunch of losers really, it makes me sad.

While in Cairo, I had the chance to contemplate my life, and I have to say I was not impressed. After many years I continue to do things I’m not passionate about! and that is one serious problem I have repeatedly failed to handle. I move from one thing to the other without real passion, which is emotionally exhausting, and is the antithesis of success. I kind of know what I want to do, but just doing it does not seem possible at the moment. Is it that I should just throw away everything and do the thing I’m passionate about? but that is a serious risk I might not be able to afford given my circumstances. I don’t know! any ideas?

 

 

Soothing!!

Listening to Clinton talking about US foreign policy in her last visit to Europe is really really really soothing, calming and simply uplifting. No more comments!

A Brief History of Time

When I was very young, I used to think the voice of the man reciting Quran on the Radio was the voice of God talking. And when I was told it is not, it sort of confirmed my preexisting suspicion that something was not in order. The words made no sense to me, and were just ramblings, but the voice of the old famous Egyptian reciter was particularly annoying. I was told I was an intelligent child who asked lots of questions, about everything. I remember when I was plus or minus 6 years old having healthy skepticism about everything around me, and this included God, so I always took the matter with a grain of salt, seriously! my little mind wouldn’t buy the answers I was getting. I used to read a lot of books about science, inventors, inventions and history of sciences. It was a marvelous world, and I spoiled many household items trying to be the inventor of my dreams. 

I remember vividly my dissatisfaction with the answers I was receiving about the God questions. Answers that to me were insubstantial, unfulfilling and sometimes felt like plain old fairy tales. You might wonder how can a kid so young distinguish between what is logical and what is fairy tales, but you would not wonder if you would have seen the types of books I used to read on science as a very young child. To give you an example, in a gathering of just pre-school kids, I met this evidently dumb lad who was blubbering about how rain is the result of the winter Camel fighting the summer Camel!! Having known for a considerable while, why it rains I was to say the least disgruntled by this stupid piece of childhood standing before me. Alas, I failed to change his mind, nevertheless such forms of rather common childhood fairy tales were for me always out of question.

When I was about 17 It dawned on me that this whole god business was a farce! and that there apparently is no one watching. Which I should tell you was such a revelation when you are 17, for one, because suddenly you can do all the BIG no no stuff your mama warned you against. And boy, did I have a good time? By that age I was not aware of the word atheist, but I later realized I was a hard core one. Thinking about it in retrospect, I think It was rather unusual for a kid to come up with such a revolutionary idea out of my own ass, with no external influences whatsoever!

I remained with this godless mind-set till I was about 24. By that time I was unusually out spoken about it. A dear girl friend of mine back in college was horrified when she realized I was a non believer. Her first reaction was, so what if you die now? do you know what happens to you? I did not give a damn! a few days later she came back to me with an offer. Her dad who is a self-proclaimed intellect is offering me a meeting at his fine office in an attempt to discuss the matter with me. No strings attached! I loved debating and I thought it was a good idea to meet the old man and so I did. Long story short, I came, I saw, I conquered. The man gave up and told his daughter this guy is dangerously smart. I met him again later once, after which he was imprisoned for business fraud, and I never saw him again.

My reading directions where shifting with time, and for some reason (perhaps hormonal?) I became bit by bit more spiritual. As a result I read tons of books on Judaism, Christianity and Islam along with other obscure teachings of eastern overweight gods. To be honest, the same way my letting go of god was a revelation, it dawned on me one day that I was wrong. Long story short, out of purely objective analysis I became a Muslim. It was the most coherent and well formed story I could find. And believe me when I say it, it had nothing to do with coming from a Muslim family. I was bold enough to have been a Scientologist if that had made any damn sense, but the Xenu thing was very improbable indeed!

Time passed and I became more of a believer everyday. There was even a time when I prayed 5 times a day…at the mosque, mind you! two years passed and to be honest after like half a year or so, I could not suppress that bad ass skepticism anymore. It kept on nagging me. I was having more questions than I could find answers. And although I held a firm belief Islam was the most logical thing out there, I still could not swallow it whole. Some things about Islam are just so damn true, you can not help but stop and wonder about them. There was a time when I even thought we could be an experiment of another higher civilization (which was an idea of a novel I actually attempted to write), if those intriguing facts about Islam are to come from anybody, then it must be a higher civilization. So what about the parts that are hard to swallow? oh you see, this higher civilization is just conducting experiments (I’m sparing you the details of the experiments), and this is why they give you some logical stuff to believe, and some which are fairies and they watch as supposedly intelligent beings suspend their minds and buy this which should not be bought. I’m blubbering right? but what is a blog for? huh?

My current agnosticism which I hold dearly, is the result of a long journey that has not yet ended and I have no idea where it is taking me. If I have learned anything through it, it is the courage to follow your mind. Should I also listen to my heart while I follow my mind? I guess I should, but I do not know what the heck that means anyway! Does the idea of religion seem logical to everyone by heart and we have to be educated out of it? or are we educated into it? For me, I was certainly a very objective, neutral young boy.

*Sigh*

If you are as unlucky as I’m then you probably have 1 choice of English speaking channels. That being CNN. Since I’m spending xmas alone having been stuck right here for many reasons, I went last night to Movie and I enjoyed it. Once I arrived home I turned on my TV and it was CNN that showed up, and there I heard a disturbing bit of news. So here it goes:

A Saudi Judge, refused to divorce an 8 years old child girl from a man who is 47 years old. He claimed that the request made by the mother is irrelevant and can not be held in court. He also “advised” the “Husband/Pedophile” to not consummate his marriage until the girl has reached puberty! Yes you heard it correctly. Three men, non of them listened to his conscience. A father who gave his child daughter to an old man in repay of a family debt. An old man who accepted a child as a wife, and a judge who held the marriage in court. All three of them had no conscience to save a child. Pretty shocking and saddening. How did this happen?

Judges in Saudi arabia are followers of the Wahabi sect who consider themselves the puritans and the only true followers of Islam. The story of Prophet Mohamed (PBUH!) that he married his wife Aisha when she was 9 years old is what guided this inhuman decision. Many respectable scholars agree that this story is a fraud, but nevertheless the Saudi’s consider it a true story, and hence a child can get married by her father to a grave old man. It is a no biggie, in fact it is rewarded as an act of following the prophet.

Imagine this, an 8 years old child married to a 47 years old man. Stop and think about it for a minute. Imagine a dear child in your family being married and even more shocking to this old man, STOP and think about it. If this does not turn your stomach then something must be wrong with you. 

Such a thing can never happen in my home country, Egypt. And the sole reason is that Egypt is a secular country and you can not marry unless you have reached the age of consent, that being 18y/o. Speak to me now about Sharia law and building an Islamic state, will you please? Would any asshat of those supporting such a religious state in Egypt dare marry his 8 year old daughter to a 47 years old man? It will happen when your judiciary system is religiously motivated!

All that aside, I can not help but notice the negative impact of religion on people’s minds. Any conscionable man would not marry such a child let alone marry her to grumpy old man. But religious thinking suspended and altered their conscience. It turned them into a slave trader father, a child molester old man, and a child molesting supporter judge. All in a whim. 

This is not the only case in Saudi Arabia or Yemen. It is in fact common. And even if the king interferes and saves this child, can he prevent such a rotten system from ruining another unlucky child’s life? it all surfaced because the Mother took the case to court, but what if a mother consents? All three child molesters would sleep at night safe and sound while a child is being abused, because they followed the orders of god.

Do not tell me it is because they all got their religion wrong. Even then, don’t we need a system to prevent those who get it wrong from doing wrong? This system is not a religious state, not remotely close! Bottom line is, in all religions, what god wants, no matter what it is, god gets.

Global Freaken Warming

I have never been a skeptic, and have always thought Global Warming was not only real, but was caused by Human activity. Particularly the human activity thing was what I thought was most important. I doubt not that global warming is true. But I doubt now that we humans caused it. this intriguing documentary shocked me to a considerable degree. Highly recommended, and done by BBC Channel 4. PLEASE DO NOT consider the blog on which it is posted to be of any interest to me. This blog is a wingnut stronghold. So do not look for wisdom anywhere beyond this video.

Let me know your thoughts…

UPDATE: I’m a buffoon. The documentary is discredited and turns out to be bullshit according to Daniel’s comment below. BEWARE don’t believe me again!

Rolling my eyes!

It is no news of course that the US does not like to keep good company, and always longs for going to bed with the bad guys. Just this week some encouraging news surfaced which makes me content that the US might part from its bad company at least on one front. You see, the United States in about 1989 institutionalized a ban by the HHS on HIV positive travelers from all over the world entering the united states. This ban was further put into a law in 1993 strangely under the Clinton administration, but with a republican congress of course.

This simply means that if you happen to be HIV positive you are banned from entering the united states, for any purpose whatsoever, period! The only way you can enter is by asking for an HIV waiver, which was given in extreme circumstances, with the added shame of having to disclose your status to the US government, and most delightfully to anybody who happen to be traveling with your sorry ass on that same black day you decide to enter the US. And I repeat, the waiver was a lengthy and shameful process, that made it practically impossible for any dignified person to think of applying for one. Such a discriminatory policy is unheard of in Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, etc. etc. A very short list of countries had similar policy, these being the United States, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and North Korea and as far as I’m concerned China removed such policy a while ago.

So what happened? Well, a couple of months ago Dubya signed the PEPFAR bill for HIV aid to Afrika, and Senator Kerry along with that bill attached an amendment lifting the ignorant, discriminatory and unheard of in the civilized world HIV travelers ban. Dubya and the democratic congress both approved the measure and it was signed into law. Hurray! no more travel ban, but does this mean an HIV positive ass can now visit the US? well, not exactly. You see, the HHS still maintains HIV on the list of communicable diseases with danger to public health in America, which means you still can not fucken enter the US, unless you do like criminals and hide your medications deep in your bags and hope for a safe passage through US customs!! Rolling my eyes now!

The reason I’m blogging about it today out of all days, is that just last week the HHS posted a note that they are revising the process, and will later issue updated guidelines lifting the ban completely on par with the civilized world. Obama promised to speed up the process and get this shameful story over with. 

So until the US learns to keep better company than Sudan, Merry Xmas and Happy new year!

P.S. sorry for the sad photo above, this was the most decent one google can offer me.

Voices

I truly believe that a multi ethnic, multi cultural society is a stronger society. I’m sure not the only one who believes so, and history testifies to this view. Rising voices in Europe warning against immigration and particularly Muslim immigration are a danger to Europe in the same way as terrorism is. To my mind both are forms of terrorism, one being Jihadist and the other being intellectual. Every now and then I encounter a moderate voice that try to counter this xenophobia by reason. Reason is important, because those who perpetrate hate speech are predominantly pseudo intellectuals with shady and dubious intellect. I’m yet to see an outstanding scholar, or intellect who tries to promote such ignorance. In fact the overwhelming majority of such outstanding individuals are moderate and liberal voices. In the few 3-4 decades since the arrival of immigrants from our regions to the Americas and to Europe success stories from the immigrant communities are numerous, just for one, the average income of a Muslim in America is significantly higher than the American national average, we have so many nobel laureates and outstanding scientists, engineers and doctors. And this has happened in much less time that many other immigrant communities. So how will it be like in a few more decades? Die with envy xenophobic freaks!

Recently I have come across this article by Hans Magnus Enzensberger  who is an influential German intellect and literary figure. He echos my personal beliefs about the role Islamic civilization played in history, and the value of openness of the society to other cultures. The moment a civilization isolates itself and lives in its own bubble is the moment it loses momentum and dies. Those xenophobic voices in America and Europe are as much powers of destruction of their own civilization as anything else. Not only are they intolerant of the other, but are also intolerant of people of their own creed simply because they hold opposing views. These people are dangerous, and we must stop them, before they spoil all the fun. They are the Grinches who want to steal our shared human values.

Cheers to Daniel for reassuring me that voices like him are so many, and we will win!

Disgust

Earlier Renegad, one of the insightful bloggers I follow, pointed out that the Islamists (although I prefer the terms “Criminals, Murders”) have no regard for who is collateral damage to their actions. Spot on. They stand no moral high ground above anyone including the always guilty Bush administration. This is but one reason those criminals turn my stomach. They are disgusting, cold blooded murderers who deserve nothing less than total annihilation!

I watched the events that unfolded in Mumbai with a mix of both disgust and outrage. I’m so pissed right now that I would be willing to annihilate those criminals with my own bare hands, call it whatever you want, but I’m outraged beyond my ability to describe it in words. What can I do to let this outrage out? I’m feeling helpless in the face of those cold blooded murderers, any ideas?

They were acting upon their own twisted logic trying to be robinhoodian  when they attacked, searching only for American and British subjects, It is a disgrace! then in addition to that they end up killing everybody that came their way! what is the mind behind this? does this seem to them like a dignified act? Do they really think this is Jihad? and for a good cause? what the F*^%*$#*%K is their cause?  There seemed to be an ideological change in the minds of those criminals, as they wanted the world to know that they only consider Americans and Brits to be their enemies, which was not the case before. Yet, their methods did not change, killing everyone they can possibly find! This was sickening, I’m feeling so disgraced. WHAT ON EARTH CAN I DO TO HELP?! IDEAS PLZ!

I’m going through an internal struggle at the moment. I was never anti religion per se, yet my logical mind can not help but see how it works! Religion is designed to be vague, and subject to multiple interpretations. There are no clear cut lines between what is true and what is not! it is inherently misleading, you can interpret it to suit your nature, be it peace loving or a criminal psychopath! tear down the wall!!!!!

Damn it! I’m going to explode in outrage! May they burn in earthly and heavenly hell if that exists!