يا أغلى صاحب

أكثر من معركة

سميح القاسم القسم

في أكثر من معركةٍ دامية الأرجاءْ
أشهر هذي الكلمات الحمراء
أشهرها.. سيفاً من نارِ
في صفِّ الإخوة.. في صفِّ الأعداء
في أكثر من درب وعْرِ
تمضي شامخةً.. أشعاري
و أخافُ.. أخاف من الغدرِ
من سكين يُغمد في ظهري
لكني، يا أغلى صاحب
يا طيّبُ.. يا بيتَ الشعرِ
رغم الشكّ.. و رغم الأحزانِ
أسمعُ.. أسمعُ.. وقع خطى الفجرِ!
رغم الشكّ.. و رغم الأحزانِ
لن أعدم إيماني
في أنّ الشمس ستشرقُ..
شمس الإنسانِ
ناشرةً ألوية النصرِ
ناشرةً ما تحمل من شوقٍ و أمانِ
كلماتي الحمراء..
كلماتي.. الخضـراء !ء

Lebnaneyyat - Children of Hreik

We were supposed to work with water bottles today. Empty plastic water bottles.
I'd collected some over the week and they came in with a few (few awey) themselves.
the deal was that we would work with around 20 kids, 8-12 years of age; that way it would be most effective.. i could work with up to 25 and if they were more we would divide them in groups and give them different activities.
so we had around 30 bottles between us, and around 40 kids. Aged 6-15. yup, a little off the mark after all.
We ended up buying more water bottles (as the situation got a little dangerous with the bottle-less kids), and seeing that i could not speak of recycling and using resources that surrounded us, and empty the bottles to the ground, i walked around the area, demonstrating how you watered trees. We watered the trees in haret hreik.

A few hours into the mayham, i found a few of the more difficult guys gathered in a corner, lying on their stomachs, or crouched on their knees, scribbling on pieces of paper and looking at each other's frantically as if they were in some competition. I worry about competitions, and so jogged over.. where were their bottles anyway?

I inquired to the bottles and they pointed to them by tossing their chins towards them or shouting over their shoulders and returned to their scribbling. They had , quite naturally, made bombs and rockets. Some of the water botles were in pieces. THe rockets were in shards once they landed you see. They could even tell you where each of the rockets had landed. But their sentences came in short bursts, or ended abruptly midway.. you were a nuisance. what in god's name where they doing..

i walked up closer trying to read over their shoulders.. i was impressed they could write.. the pages they leaned over were drenched in words. I just couldn't manage to read them. and then when i could, i still couldn't understand.. what was this?
then i came across one word, ' el bawarej..' and it dawned on me..
they were writing bits and pieces of Nasrallah's speeches, racing over who could remember the larger chunks.

Shocked at first, i calmed myself with the memory of the kid on the plane who sang nancy 3agram songs between intervals of 'twinkle twinkle little starts' and 'fre're-o jack-o' on the plane. If they could remember the song, why would they not remember the speeches their lives depended on?

-------------------------------------------------------------- X ------------------------------------------------------------------


'Alia..'
she asked, her friend standing next to her watching me closely, both of them looking very suspicious..
'aywaaa..' i answered feigning skepticism and curiosity myself at the drawl with which my name was pronounced..
'Betsumey ya Alia..?'
I smiled. Definitely more cunning than Lebanon had me used to. 'Aywa basume' i said after much thought.
I asked them if it made a difference to our friendship. They stayed quiet and could not answer. I talked for a while of something i knew would make no difference , was not in place, and that i probably knew very little of anyway, so i just trailed off, and got busy tying a knot for someone. They skipped off.

'Aliaa...'
THey were back. This time giggling and pinching each other, pushing each other to ask the question.
'Beteftarey 3ala adhan sunney wala adhan shee3ey..'
not so smart. all they had to do was wait. The shi3ey and sunney adhan were fifteen minutes apart.. in a restaurant, a playground or on the street, i was taught you could tell them apart that way. i responded, and the shock on their faces was indescribable.
A few stories by one of the girls gave away the strength of their political orientations and loyalties at home; and thus quite obviously, which adhan they ate to. The area we were in easily dictated the question of whether or not fasting availed here.
The thing that came to my mind on reading the shock on their faces was that they looked as a man who i would have tricked as to my religion or marriage status would have seemed. That is what IMMEDIATELY came to my mind. The giggles suddenly stopped, one girls gasped so quickly and spontaneously she almost choked on it. They looked at each other, tried to regain their composure, mumbled something inaudible and tripped as they walked away. Would it affect our friendship; i wanted to ask again..
but the answer was clear. And for a second i felt as uncomfortable as i would have felt had i been a child and told i could not play because i was Egyptian.
What it is about the way they did it that pronounced such final rejection i do not know...perhaps it was the uncertainty, no , the sort of 'obligation' with which they did it..
it was not that they didn't want to be friends with me, it was the realization that they 'couldn't' be. True, we later overcame it, and things were fine when we played (they were after all 9 and 10), but still there was that moment of realization, almost revealing a kind of treachery they could not reconcile themselves to.. or a million questions and phrases that repeated themselves in their minds, so that such YOUNG faces were immediately creased with concerns, and a burden, i would not have imagined possible at that age. and the contrast of such a concern or burden to the giggles that preluded them was profound.

It's a different experience for us altogether. H, who was lebanese later told me.
When the kids found out Mark 'doesn't fast', and told him he couldn't play, when they teased him, and even though it was short-lived, it echoed and rippled alot deeper with all of us. Everything they said and did brought back painful memories for all of us.. we all had some of these experiences when we were young.. and we lost so much more than a game or two on account of it.
When they teased him, it put us all at great unease, but more importantly it hurt like hell..
it wasn't that they were kids and we were adults, it was that we were catapulted into the world of insecurity, distrust, fear, bombs, separation , we had hoped to have climbed out of. All our childhood fears and experiences threatened to return.
it's a constant reminder of how fragile the situation is... of how much work there is to be done.
it's very different for us ya Alia.. it's not just about working with kids..

-------------------------------------------X-------------------------------------------------

This time we made worry dolls. In Guatemala it is said that, the Mayans believe that if you tell a worry doll ur worries, and place it under ur pillow the worry people come at night and take them away. The day before, we gathered 'round, i told the story, and explained how we would make the dolls using match-sticks.
'You talk to dolls?' One girl asked me with an expression of exaggerated skepticism and disbelief..
'yup' i admitted -- looks were exchanged , eye-balls rolled, lips curled, and laps slapped as some boys cracked up.
'Do you pray to the dolls?!' one little wrapped girl asked -- her expression was less skeptical and more hopeful - more like - 'please don't tell me we can't work together..'
'No , i talk, i don't' pray..'
i tried in a futile attempt to explain how sometimes talking about a problem makes it go away in here -- gesturing towards my chest, where problems at times, pile up.
On the other hand, i pulled out my trusty worry note book, where my little worry dolls were pasted.. i explained you could also 'write' ur worries.. There was less skepticism, more interest at the prospect of writing the worries -- good,i thought.. maybe i'll still have some of them tom.
Still however, there were no signs of appreciation towards my worry dolls.

The next day, almost all of them showed up; more notably, was a significant level of excitement towards the making of the dolls.
Perhaps it seemed fun.
As tedious as the whole process was however (imagine breaking matchsticks into arms and leggs, wrapping them in thread and yarn to make clothes, and cutting pieces of cloth to clothe them) a strange silence reigned over the playground as the kids were immersed in a (short lived) deep concentration as they perfected their worry dolls. The experience was very similar with the notorious all boy cast (so named 'kata2eb el 3azab) that i worked with the next week.

Jad, ( a five year old) was even making several worry dolls and hiding them - at the end of the day we found he had glued them to a piece of paper and then many others producing a replica of my notebook.. not only on his own, but in secret. He would write his bedtime stories for the worry dolls to come to life to.

We did not only have worry dolls; the Guatemalan ones had painted sand on their matchstick heads as hair. We had long blond haired ones, long black braided locks on others; we had a king with a crown, a clown, some wore scarves, others waistcoats, some held umbrellas, and some held truce flags.. the creativity with such tiny structures was incredible..
Then was time to pack and leave..

The questions.
How do you speak to them.. what time exactly .. was their a way you asked for things.. would they not break under the pillow? was it a pinnochio sort of phenomena? Do they need to be warm in the winter; can i name them?

And then she came through. Older than most of the others, Hajjar always seemed a little shy at showing too much excitement at what she should have outgrown.
Tightly wrapped, Hajjar approached amongst the crowd.. the crowd needed knots, more glue the scissors, a name, an answer...
she stood in the middle of all of them and asked a question in her normal tone of voice.. not bothering to raise it over the din. Particularly interested in what she had to say, and fearing she might change her mind, i reached for her hand, and tried to pull her closely.. she resisted, and kept asking the same question over and over.. head tilted slightly downwards, eyes looking up, and speaking softly.
At this i tried to come closer myself..
'Beyen7alu..?'
(Are they solved)
She looked up at me which such concentration keda.. i can't say 3asham, because it was just too intense a look, as if she not only wanted to hear the answer, bas see it in my face. She squinted, her look challenging, shy, and yet there was something almost desperate about it.
But what was i to say..
There was little scope to explain anything in such a din, and i had already learnt better than to sugar cream or magic wand anything..
I once again brought my hand to my upper chest and gestured there..
'Beyzulu...'..
The gestures i made as if to say that the vanished in here.. where the burden accumulates the most..
She nodded the disappointment clear and unmistakable. She attempted a meek smile at me, but could not even keep it for as long as it took her to turn her head and walk away, her neck craned, shoulders slumped, and her face clad with a disappointment i would have never wished to have seen; nor brought about.

Gaana El Eid...

I seem to forever have memories of ayam el eid, or at least awel yom el eid, being as sunny as it was today. Sunny, with fluffy white clouds, an unarguably bright day - as if the day is a product of collective whims and expectations. It carries the promise, or perhaps the fulfillment of a promise, that no matter what, el eid eid..

You wake up; Ramadan's just packed and left, taking most of the golden sticky, and the next morning with all that is ka7k and crumbly, gaanna el eid e we ganna el eid..
With it, the bright mornings, the masses of prim and crisply dressed children, the carefully combed hair, and the general bahga.
Perhaps it is the bahga of a holiday, or one of days of preparations , buying 'new' clothes, 'new' shoes.. even those that suffer to make ends meet, seem to insist on making something meet somewhere.. something must be new.

And so today was bright.. breakfast with Nanna and cousins was cheery, lunch with the uncles and aunts, was bubbly..
'El eid 7elw ya lulu!' was how my aunt launched the day with her phone call. Much in line with her announcement, people were in a good mood, the air was light, and i continued to shout 'wenta(y) tayeb(ba)' at strangers all day long :)

Where is the phenomena? This one that changes the weather, lifts the mood, and makes people so kind?
It is no where but inside our heads and hearts; a collective decision that it is a special day, and is to be celebrated...

At night, i went to a wust el balad concert with friends. It is not their music that i enjoy as it is the atmosphere they create. The open air river hall at Sawi was as full as it ever could be. Or at least, that's what i told myself every other minute, and as the minutes progressed, people would pile up in the ares you would least expect to see them. Literaly over you and under you, beside you and all around you, and as far , high and low as your eye could see. People people people. And yes, there seemed to be the crispness of the new clothes. Or at least i wished to see it as such. The ripples of excitement were so powerful this time you could barely tell if they were rippling from the audience to the stage or vice verca.. everyone was jumping up and down and screaming at the top of their lungs, that if it wasn't exhilarating; it was actually alarming.

My favorite eid experience however, was when i found 'el welad'.
You know, the ones of 'aho geyh ya welad' and '2olu ma3aya 2olu... 2OLU', Yes, the 'heyyh heyyyh heyyyyyh' ones..
I very gleefully came across them.

I went for a stroll down el sayedda zeinab with amito, in search of maragee7 el eid. Or 'el eid' as my dad refers to them. For my parents the maragee7 more than anything represented the 'phenomena', so much so that for dad, this was ' el eid'; thus perhaps kanu beyru7u el eid, rather than wake up and 'find it' or 'not find it' as i have had experienced.

So yes, i went in search of more eids.
Through zawareeb we el zawa2ee2 we strolled, and it was as romantic as any nostalgic memory of Egypt could be..
the weather was slightly breezy; the music came loud and alive from some shops, and trickled through the unshankled sheeshs of the balconys of other houses...
the roads were uneven, wet, dark, and radiated a strange sense of security and warmth. The shops displayed a wide range of toys, all hanging off laundry ropes that stretched from one side of the kiosk to the other..
Eshey 3arayes, we eshey cars...20 years older than the last time these objects held my undivided attention and affection, i still yearned for the funny assortments with wide eyes, and itching palms.

And then they appeared..
The sound of wooden wheels stumbling over the uneven cement, and through the narrow alleys, echoed by the sound of giggles, shrieks, shouts and the collective colorful sounds of excited children. A rickety old cart, pulled by a donkey; it's driver sitting, one leg lifted so that it supported one elbow, and the other dangling from the cart. The cart was PACKED with kids. Packed. There were tens of them, on a space that could have possibly adequately been filled by ten kids. I have no idea how they fit on it, but you were at once struck by their multitude;

3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal 3eyal..

It seemed as if they were piled untop of each other, and miraculously bound together so that they remained ON the cart (rather than under it) by some invisible rope.The driver whipped the donkey rhythmically with his reigns; a kind plump face framed with a dark heavy beard, that seemed to encompass his head fully; clad in a brownish galabeyya.

With every little whip he would shout over the tiny shrieks with;
'2OLU 'HEYYYYYYYYYYY''
and the children would instantly (attempts at simultaneity) shreik 'HEYYYYYYYYYYHHHHH'

the fact that they didn't all hear him at the same time, made some heyyh's longer than others, but all shrieked with equal excitement and tickled pleasure; a chaotic, frantic, colorful expression of glee; HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYH!

And so the rickety thing trudged through the alleys and puddles, the driver quite neutrally pulling it through with the periodic '2olu heyyh'
and the children all over each other, the cart and the place, mouths wide open (missing the occasional tooth), hands full with coloful objects, in colorful little dresses and shiny black 2ossas,and properly dressed hair we bey2olu 'heyyyyyyyh'..

An image i am unlikely to let fade anytime soon. We adi el eid :) Huwwa gey shwaya wana ro7tellu shwaya.
All came to life as even Hambolla downtown, we drinkies in Zamalek are back in action with their array of trickily drinks back in their vatrinas, and empty cartons piled untop of each other indicating a busy day after some hibernation..
The adjacent toy stores seem to enjoy an equal burst of action as they are frequented by the young and toothless which as much fervor and perhaps even more purchase power.

Doors open with smiling faces, people are uncharacteristically patient, the day is alive, the weather is warm, the food was plentiful (perhaps even a little more), and very tasty, the ka7k abundant, the swings in full action and the festivities running..

You will tell me i romanticize.
I will tell you, Akh..
i am home.

Eid Saeed..

رحنا وجينا

ســالمة يا سلامة

كلمات بديع خيرى ; ألحان سيد درويش

ســــالمة يا ســـلامة رحنا وجينا بالسلامة
صفر يا وابور واربط عندك نزلنــــى فى البــــــلد دى
بلا أمـــــيركا بلا أوربـــــــا مافى شئ أحسن من بلدى
دى المركب اللى بتجيــــــب احســن من اللى بتــــودى

يا اسطى بشندى

سـالمة يا سلامة

سـلطة ما سلطة كله مكسب حوشــــنا مــال وجيــــــنا
شفنا الحرب وشفتا الضرب وشــــفنا الديناميت بعنــينا
ربك واحـــد عمرك واحــد ادى احنا رحـــنا وجيــــنا

ايه خس عليــنا
سالمة يا سلامة

صلاة النيى ع الشخص منا فرصـــة ميه بلا قافيــــــة
اللى ف جـــيبه يفنجــــر به والبركة فى العين والعافية
ح تـــاخد ايه م الدنيــا غيـر الستر يا شيخ خليها ماشـية

دنيـــا فانيــــــة
سالمة يا سلامة

دى الغربـــــــة ياما بتــــــــــورى بتخــــــلى الصــــنايعى بيـــرطن
مطـــــرح ما يـــروح المصــــرى برضــه طـــول عمــره ذو تفنــن
وحيـــــــاة ربنـــــــــا المعبـــــــود وى آر فرى جود ياسطى محمود

قــدها وقــدود
سالمة ياسلامة

On Classism..

El 3Ashera masaa2an episode of tonight, was really enjoyable and highly recommended!
Mesh 3arfa law beyet3ad bokra, bas i would generally recommend it awey..

Otherwise maybe we can get Heba Raouf and Samer Soliman and i'm not sure how Abdel Wahab el MEssiri's health is doing - bas maybe we can get them for a salon on classism in Egypt and how it is affecting a movement for change. Not only how it's affecting the movement negatively, bas how existing social structures can boost or contribute positively.

The topic covered was el tabaqeyya (ma bada leey ya3ni) and they featured Abdelwahab el Messiri, Dr Heba Raouf (assistant Pol Sci proffessor at gam3et el qaherra), Dr Samer Soliman (of the New left- prof at auc and Author of النظام القوي والدولة الضعيفة) and AbdelBasset Abdel Mo3tey (whomi think it s political economist or political sociologist i'm not sure bas is author of ( م(الطبقات الإجتماعية ومستقبل مصر -- دار ميريت

They talked about a number of interesting issues, bas off the top of my mind keda and just to tempt you to watch the program;

Dissappearing Middle Class

THey were discussing how the middle class has not disappeared as is usually indicated or assessed, but it has more like 'exploded' or become very stratified. So that the gap pertains withIN the middle class itself, and the rising gini coefficient is not just an upper-lower class one.

That 'class' was supposed to be determined upon a social-economic basis , but that now it is mainly a social determinant. According to Heba Raouf; the way the society has been socially engineered is such that 'i consume; thereby i exist; i cannot afford to consume and thereby i do not afford to exist'. She was saying that social class is no longer determined by your income kaman, bas also by where you live, where you go to school, where you work. It is both determined AND determines those factors.
That we are now becoming what are referred to 'gated communities'

She also said it's almost like we were one huge continent (teh way teh world was zaman) and are now slowly drifting apart as different distant islands, not connected to each other at all.

What class do the police belong to for instance? El geysh?
It's a complex social map and and that your social status 'upper or lower' depends on who sees who in their rear view mirror. ( i particularly liked this)

Abdel Basset Abdel Meguid and Samer Soliman, talked about how the middle class has become al tabaqa al mu7bata aw el tabaqa al mahzuma, constantly in fear of falling into what lies beneath them, and constantly intimidated by what lays above them; what they spend their lives working towards and fearing at the very same time.

Social Class in Social Movements.

They then talked a little about the middle class and why it doesn't move or mobilize for change. What's stopping them.
here they talked about lack of a national project, or the labor and communist movements in the 40's and the student movements then and thereafter.

They talked about citizenship and el entema2 and the huge effect the social class structure was having on both belonging and the sense of agency.

Dr Heba was also saying how you need a strong level of consciousness amongst classes after which this consciousness must be transformed to action, and how we are finding it difficult to achieve the first level on both political and social basis.
Abdel Maguid and Soliman added how this is on account of the lack of effective political parties and how it is their role to transform consciousness to action, and the way i perceived it , also their role to encourage hegemonic formations that was severely lacking.

Abdel Maguid also talked about the lack of resistance displayed by the middle class - and when attacked with their helplessness presumed and presented what seemed to be models of passive resistance that the classes can adapt.

Overall ya3ni, the way they tried to trace the social engineering, social structuring and the general warped social map we live in and it's affect on all the 'nodes' in its network/web, from a cultural/socail/economic and political standpoint, was just very interesting to watch/engage in.

At the very end , Abdelwahab El Messeiri closed with a few words about Egyptians, and the nature of Egyptians and how he 'knows' they will pull through and change prevailing consciences and conciousness regardless of the engineered structures they are stuck in.
it was a very Messiri thing to say in a very messiri way. And although everything talked about was structured, and hard-core keda and thrashing and almost angry, something about his softness and conviction keda was very reassuring. ( i know i could get stoned for this one!)

______________________________________________________________________________

That was a very quick preview keda, bas complimenting this; one of the most interesting findings in my research this summer was that what seemed (to me) to be the core problem in the class issue, particularly in pertaining to the movements, was not really the gap bas the lack of communication between the classes. Although no one centralized it; the issue came up in most of my interviews.

A proffessor was talking masalan about how there used to always be a poor far3 and a rich far3 in every family and how rare that is now, or at least how rare the regular interaction that is ; another was telling me how he was friends with the driver's and house keepers children, and how that helped encourage him in the movement in the 70s; and truly understand the issues he was calling for.

An activist was talking about the events of the 25th of May , (the harassment) and how the fact that both parties (the wataney perpetrators and the girls in the movement) had never really communicated or made any kind of contact before.. and how that can make it very easy for any outsider to spark blind anger and aggression between them. They can easily believe anything anyone tells them about 'these girls' because they are so mo7arameen or so far away from them. (it almost sounds like the colonial woman- occupied man issue now that i mentioned it)

What's interesting kaman is the role that art and culture played in this sort of communication in the 40's and the 70's... there were songs and poetry that communicated the movement and its issues and pulled people together. Emails and Sms's mobilize much less than they exclude, apparently. The idea of the above-mentioned techniques, was they were communication techniques that involved and engaged the illeterate kaman. ranging from songs ('takhleed zekra al moqawma wal monadelun') which contributed greatly to collective memory and a genearl feel and drive for the issue; to plays, and Negm's poetry kaman...
Also ba7ess in teh revival of the cultural scene right now, there is alot that brings people together - finally something that is all of ours; something that purchase power can't be a deterimental factor in.
(And here i'm only discussing the effect of art and culture on 'communicating' and unifying; bas it's also SUCH an infinately effective development tool; not to 'develop' people or help them fish, bas just its power in enableing people to realize what it is they can do and how best to do it given culture , values etc - it's really strong..(check arjun appadurai on 'cultural aspiration maps))

Akher qessa 'interesting' wallahi we 7a2afel :)
In the 40's a narrative of a student activist was that after being arrested after mozahra's they received genuine help and sympathy from drs and jailers, bas very little of it from the guards that broke the protests.
One medical student in a protest in the late 30's was saying 'el ragel kan nazel feyya darb bey2uli 'ba2a enta kolaha sanateyn we teb2a daktor - we anna mesh ader 2adakhal weladi ebteda2i??!') and that it was something he never forgot.

In the 70s however an activist was talking about how the most beautiful and secure thing was 'masr kolaha kanet ma3ana' so you have romantic stories of crying zobaat, weeping officials, or relenting ones, from many different fronts. How the lower classes seemed empowered by the revolution so that there was so much bitterness; and there was so much more scope for unity.
Another interesting thing an activist - now professor was saying was how in the 60s/70s you could not really tell much about someone from their clothes; except for their taste, now you can tell almost everything from her car to where he/she lives to what their dad does...

This is not to underestimate the stregnth of the national projects of independance and the revolution and it's values that must have been hegemonic in and of themselves at teh time; and the lack of a common unifying goal at the moment...
bas bardo there is so little we know about each other :)
And for that 'realization' alone; i think a great number of us will always be indebted to fat'het kheir :)

Once again, i am infamously not getting at anything but throwing random thoughts at you :)
This is little opinion and analysis and much recollection we bas..

Where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

"...In a murderous time

the heart breaks and breaks,

and lives by breaking.

It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.

I am looking for the trail..."

Stanley Kunitz - The Testing Tree

...but not forgotten

Having to follow up closely with lebanon seemed to imply turning the pages over Iraq, and Palestine really quickly..
As if you can only handle one page at a time.
And maybe that's true. How much can a human heart or mind handle at once.
Sometimes i read the blogs or pieces of news and nodd slowly closing and opening my eyes emphetically; as if to say 'yes i know... i know this one..' becuase i have heard/read it so many times before. Sometimes it's difficult to remember the context, you scroll back to the top or flip the page to check with region you're reading again, and sometimes it doesn't really matter.

Helpless? la2, that's not what i'm feeling at all.
I personally felt a very positive movement towards lebanon on all our parts and also towards the political and not so political (but invaded by corrupted politics) events here in Egypt. Bas what triggers us everytime? Is it the pictures on the news? What if they just stop coming through? What if we get less inspiring emails by foreign MP speeches, or people in Lebanon who are able to send out their messages creatively? Not that we shouldn't make the best of such media, bas how do we keep ourselves stimulated to act, continuously...?

There are a few things in Riverbend's (Iraqi girl's blog below) that echoed very familiarly;

"I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever know just how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left the country this bleak summer. I wonder how many of them will actually return. Where will they go? What will they do with themselves? Is it time to follow? Is it time to wash our hands of the country and try to find a stable life somewhere else?"

When does it feel right to stay behind and fight for it, and when does it feel necessary to find a 'stable life somehwere else' or at least one you can relate to... how many of us have asked ourselves that question :)

Another one was;
"I woke up this morning to scenes of carnage and destruction on the television and for the briefest of moments, I thought it was footage of Iraq. It took me a few seconds to realize it was actually Qana in Lebanon."

This was on the irony of how difficult it is to tell what's happening where anymore. it seems to be happening everywhere.

And finally;

"No matter the loss of hundreds of innocent lives. No matter the children who died last night- they’re only Arabs, after all, right?
Right?"

I just watched Hotel Rwanda the other day and remembered how the UN forces were telling Paul, (Rwandan hotel owner) that the rescue they were all anticipating, was NOT coming.. why? Because you're african, and nobody cares about Africa.. This is not on a low note, khales, Quite the contrary.

The other day Heikal was talking to a Lebanese host on a program, reflecting on the events in the region, and lebanon in particular. And he was talking about observing change, or the events to note; and he said our problem is we see the '3awasef' (the Storms) very clearly, bas we never really notice the debris or particles that surround it or come with it..

I couldn't remember the exact phrase, bas the sense i got from it, was that it was not only the storms, the very big events, or very big changes that we should anticipate or account for, bas all that surrounds them; precedes them; preludes them in the air..

There is such a strong air of resistance that comes from lebanon, and i don't speak of Nasrallah,bas the youth and the artists and the general collective and individual movements that have risen up. THe same is to be said for Eygpt, even if the politically oriented movements seem to struggle, there is such hope in the cultural resurgence (or insurgance), the growing social responsibility, and the growing political movement. It's as if there is a growing sense of ownership, and a general sense of;
'if i cannot find that which i'm looking for; i build it..'
A surge of conscience and consciousness keda.

It's happening very slowly and the efforts may at times seem scattered, bas alot of networking and clustering and bonding is happening, alot is being written and alot is being built and alot is being DONE.. there is a movement. Even Egyptians abroad are generating energy and sending it back in.

And it's not only limited to Egypt.
I've a sense, (and i may not be able to back it up entirely empirically), bas whole socio-cultural-political centre of gravity seems to be shifting.. and whilst things 'are happening to us', and we are reacting to them, everytime we react we build, even if it is only a foundation we build, or solidarity, or more scope for stronger action, or production, bas we're really building.

Like a sort of system or systems, or a whole new life system is building up in parallel to that which we shun or are forced to live in. And i don't want to limit it to 'the government' or the political system, because it's not only that. El Share3, wel turath, wel tareekh, wel ard kolaha lenna.

We're retrieving it, getting it back one by one. It's happening very slowly, bas as we create our own grounds, our own havens where we do things as they should be done, see the things that we would like to see, and live in the world as we would have loved to find it; we are retrieving it.

Riverbend's blog;
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

On little revolutions

Revolution and youth are closely allied. What can a revolution promise to adults? To some it brings disgrace, to others favour. But even that favour is questionable, for it affects only the worse half of life, and in addition to advantages it also entails uncertainty, exhausting activity and upheaval of settled habits.

Youth is substantially better off: it is not burdened by guilt, and the revolution can accept young people in to. The uncertainty of revolutionary times is an advantage for youth, because it is the world of the fathers that is challenged. How exciting is the entry into the age of maturity over the shattered ramparts of the adult world!"

Milan Kundera, "Life is Elsewhere".

"The future is up in the air, better get on board!"
A worker on why he joined the protests leading up to the Iranian revolution in 1979.

"Once the train of change has left the platform , there realy is no turning back!"
Egyptian activist on why he joined the current movement.

"The youth...the students; they might not be capable of bringing about the change they demand.. but they can bring the issues to the surface. They face the world with them, and push it to deal with them"
Egyptian Student activist from the 60s

"I walked into university; and everywhere, all around me were the wall magazines (megalat 7a2et).They were on the walls, so that there was no space, and as i walked further in, i suddenly realized they were all over the floor too. Everywhere. Words of poetry, of holy scripts, of movement , glories, acheivements, anger, demands.. and soon in the courtyars i came to a point where ropes were stretched across from one end to the another, and the magazines hung across the pegs, swaying before us.. arguing with each other, complimenting each other; bringing us all together. The world was right there. It was happening all around me. I had stepped into the world!"
Egyptian student activist in the 70s, at that point completely de-politicized; at this point leader of a political party.

Most studies on social movements indicate that it takes some kind of contention, some kind of unrest, to spark even the youth or students into the movements.
In Egypt, particularly in the 70s and the late 40s; it seemed more like 'hope'..

It goes on..

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.
Robert Frost

I have always LOVED Robert Frost. His were the first poems I made an effort to learn by heart. I loved to reproduce them, in my mind, out loud, to friends, through play, living them through, or even to a mirror.

He seemed to also see ,that life; was all about metaphors.
He saw nature, the woods, the roads; travelled and less travelled by, loveliness; dark and deep, loneliness, promises to keep; they all meant something else, something more. But he communicated it all, all the deeper meanings, through everything that every eye could easily see.

And life IS all about metaphors. Physical pain for example; I think is something we experience , only to teach us to deal with the real, deep, scorching, internal and not so physical pain. We fall countless times when young, and we scrape our knees or maybe need a few stitches, but we watch and we see, everytime we painfully pull away the band-aid, that no matter how red, purple, green, the ta3weera gets; in time, sometimes long and sometimes short, they are nothing. And except for a scar; we heal.
And the scars…even those are reminders, that what was once painful no longer is.

During my time (splendidly confusing and should enriching years) with Fat'het kheyr, we would sit for hours with our 'loan groups' doing 'our part' to help, when in fact the lessons of humility and life, are ones that will never match up to anything we have given. We would listen to their stories, try to think of how we can work something out together, but at least a third of the time, feel powerfully helpless, slumped and at loss. In my own experience; they were those times that the women would ironically perk up, pat me on the back, wipe away their tears and say something like ' ya bent ya 3abeeta kolo bey3ady…'

Once at a particularly critical 'husband has prostate cancer' , ' no money for eid food' , 'son needs a shoe', 'daughter is seriously ill', time, awhen I could barely hide my distraught, Om Samar laughed and said..
'Mesh el shams 7atetla3 bokra?'
Slapping one hand over the other (though softly) on her lap, bending over with her head tilted towards me, and her face looked away from me, eyes wide, lips pursed, in a very small 'prelude to a wise smile' smile. Her face however, was already beginning to open up into one.
'aah'. I affirmed, my head tilted downwards - still at loss- and not knowing where this was going. Seeing little hope of going anywhere.
'khalas. Yeb2a yom gedid 7ayebtedy. 7a3mel eyh. We kol yom 7ayeb2a fee mashakel, we kol yom 7annam 3aleyha.
neegy el sob7… BARDO nela2ey el shams betetla3… Talama kol leyl beyekhlas, we ba3deeh, kol nehar yebetedy, yeb2a kol 7aga 7atekhlas, we kol 7aga 7atebtedy men gedid.. we aho, kol yom beforas Tanya…'

There was nothing cliché about Om Samar's little monologue. It wasn't a famous saying of hers, or part of her trademark optimism. I think it was something she learnt with time.

I don't know what exactly she meant, but a world of meaning revealed itself to me.
Not that every day brought a new chance. But that everyday was new. And every day was a metaphor. Because as 'lovely dark and deep' each night is, however sad, however content, the sun shines loud and bright every morning, making you squint, and shield your face from it, but also making you realize, the sometimes wonderful, the sometimes very harsh reality, that another day has come, and that life beckons you to pull it through.

And so the sun, in all it's yellowness and brightness, pulls us, pushes us, forces us if you will, to move. Mover for shelter, mover for food, mover for shade; just move.

Everything is alive. Everything seems wise, and so everything does indeed send beautiful messages. I have a powerful deep faith in God, and nothing rings closer , truer or warmer in my heart. But whether it is God that people believe in, or the life that throbs around them, everything is alive.
The wind does whisper, Leaves do wave at you, trees are good listeners, waves are playful, and mountains doo carry millions and ages of stories and wisdoms.. they do watch, they do listen, they do witness and they do preserve the wisdom of the ages.

If you are true to yourself to the world, and perhaps to God, then you cannot but feel it. You cannot but hear them. It is just sometimes that we choose not to.
Memories, thoughts, ideas; pain and joy do linger in the atmosphere around us. Every place has it's own feel, it's own memories. And once again if you let yourself go completely you can feel them. You can feel the tension, you can feel the trueness and purity, you can feel the pain.
I have felt them in the deserts of the oasis and the mountains of Sinai, in Gibran's house in the mountains, in the south of Lebanon, and the heart of Berlin . In the depths of the citadel's prisons, and on the banks of the rivers in Florence. But I am not special in that sense. And I'm sure everyone feels things differently…but we do feel it.

Given that; everything is alive and that we are surrounded by the energy of all that has happened before us, and all that has been thought and lived, so that even place breathes with life, then how can we not believe in signs.
They come in little events, and gestures, and whisps and drops; but they come. They carress, and they whisper and they touch; and sometimes they scratch; often deeply too. But they speak to us, in a language we have not been accustomed to use.

'It goes on'.

As silly as it felt when I first read it, and as little as I could grasp the wisdom, it was short, and it was witty, and I loved Robert Frost.

But life as you come to realize; idoes go on. And when your heart refuses to stop at the times when the pain makes it seem only natural that it should, and when your eyes continue to flutter open at the first chirp of the first ray, and when a word, a letter, a song, touches, inspires, caresses or enlightens you. When the world seems to fall apart around you , and you have little power to stop it, when your voice is not loud enough for you to dictate the way things should./could be. That's when you realize that as cruel as it might be, as a blessing; it continues. And what doesn't kill you? Yes; it makes you stronger. And until you are stronger you just live. And as long as you are 'living' it is only up to you and up to you only how you decide to live it.

And all those clichés and all those silly quotes and every day sayings; about life going on, about what doesn't kill you, about the sun coming up again?
Hold on to them tightly. Because at the times when things are loveliest, loneliest, darkest and deepest; it is their soft familiar ring; and only theirs, that pulls you through.

It goes on, and on, and on. Life's toughest lessons, seem to be its simplest. But no good lessons ever come easy.

And that;
is my take on,
and my peace with,
the world,
for today. :)

On Zigzags and Surprises

The Optimism of Uncertainty by Howard Zinn
From an excerpt of Paul Rogat Loeb's book "The Impossible Will Takea Little While"

In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manageto stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident notthat the world will get better, but that we should not give up thegame before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose anychance of winning.

To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing theworld. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonishedby the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changesin people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion againsttyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundredyears is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because weare talking about exactly the period when human beings became soingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the streettalking to someone halfway around the earth.

Let's go back a hundred years. A revolution to overthrow the tsar ofRussia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers, but took Lenin himselfby surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Given theRussian Revolution, who could have predicted Stalin's deformationof it, or Khrushchev's astounding exposure of Stalin, or Gorbachev's succession of surprises? Who would have predicted thebizarre shifts of World War II-the Nazi-Soviet pact (thoseembarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands),and the German army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates ofLeningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets ofStalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitlerhuddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?

And then the post-war world, taking a shape no one could have drawnin advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, which Stalin himselfhad given little chance. And then the break with the Soviet Union,the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently heldideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling upto capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone. No one foresaw thedisintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be createdin the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialismof Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda.

Spain became an astonishment. A million died in the civil war, which ended in victory for the Fascist Franco, backed by Hitler andMussolini. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigadetelling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism beingoverthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists,Communists, anarchists, everyone. In other places too, deeplyentrenched dictatorships seemed suddenly to disintegrate-inPortugal, Argentina, the Philippines, Iran.

The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respectivespheres of influence and control, vying for military and politicalpower. The United States and the Soviet Union soon each had enoughthermonuclear bombs to devastate the Earth several times over. The international scene was dominated by their rivalry, and it wassupposed that all affairs, in every nation, were affected by theirlooming presence. Yet the most striking fact about thesesuperpowers was that, despite their size, their wealth, their overwhelming accumulation of nuclear weapons, they were unable tocontrol events, even in those parts of the world considered to betheir respective spheres of influence. The failure of the SovietUnion to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most strikingevidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does notguarantee domination over a determined population.

The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in lndochina, conducted the most brutal bombardment of a tinypeninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. InLatin America, after a long history of U.S. military interventionhaving its way again and again, this superpower, with all its wealth and weapons, found itself frustrated. It was unable toprevent a revolution in Cuba, and the Latin American dictatorshipsthat the United States supported from Chile to Argentina to ElSalvador have fallen. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over thepresumably powerless, as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement ofworkers and the poor elected a new president pledged to fightdestructive corporate power.

Looking at this catalog of huge surprises, it's clear that thestruggle for justice should never be abandoned because of theapparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and themoney and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable tohuman qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moralfervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit,ingenuity, courage, patience-whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Vietnam, or workersand intellectuals in Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union itself.

No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people whoare persuaded that their cause is just. I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just myfriends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all theevidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope.Especially young people, in whom the future rests. Wherever I go, I find such people. And beyond the handful of activists there seem tobe hundreds, thousands more who are open to unorthodox ideas. Butthey tend not to know of each other's existence, and so, while theypersist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the mountain.

I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the verypeople who are disheartened by the absence of a national movementare themselves proof of the potential for such a movement. It is this change in consciousness that encourages me. Granted, racialhatred and sex discrimination are still with us, war and violencestill poison our culture, we have a large underclass of poor,desperate people, and there is a hard core of the population content with the way things are, afraid of change. But if we seeonly that, we have lost historical perspective, and then it is asif we were born yesterday and we know only the depressing storiesin this morning's newspapers, this evening's television reports.

Consider the remarkable transformation, in just a few decades, inpeople's consciousness of racism, in the bold presence of womendemanding their rightful place, in a growing public awareness thatgays are not curiosities but sensate human beings, in the long-term growing skepticism about military intervention despite brief surgesof military madness. It is that long-term change that I think wemust see if we are not to lose hope. Pessimism becomes aself-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act. Revolutionary change does not come as onecataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endlesssuccession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decentsociety.

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions ofpeople, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there isfun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, withother good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. Anoptimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in thedark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishlyromantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage,kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history willdetermine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys ourcapacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, thisgives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sendingthis spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we doact, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents,and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defianceof all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Adapted from "The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear", edited by Paul Rogat Loeb.

Partsof this essay appeared in You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Trainand Howard Zinn on History.

Published on Monday, November 8, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

On beauty; how deep?

As i sit slumped in the tube, a 'poem of hte underground' catches my attention. i perk up, and;

Beauty is impelled to find a face to dwell in:
there, delight is such
that I seek nothing more;
I would scour the sky to share with the elect this living grace.
The works of their Creator bear his sign
So if my soul burns fiercely with love of all fair shapes,
then judgement from above Must hold me guiltless:
because beauty is divine.

La Forza d'un bel viso a che mi sprona.
Michelangelo

My heart sighs so deeply it almost breaks. But the beauty i see, or wish seen in me, would more realistically be;

A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace, which here and there Enthralls the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave (deserving note)In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

Robert Herrick
Delight in Disorder.

If anything i did get however; it was this;

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Yeats.
He wishes for the cloths of Heaven.

And in elegant cursive it read;

To Alia; My favorite Student. Who trod softly and most delightfully.

On skies and 'why's

The skies cry alot in london...
in the winter's it's understandable. it's cold. everything is bear. everything wilts and falls. even the wind fails to find the leaves to whisper to. to snicker to giggle with.
It races back to the skies in anger. Sharp rays of cold anger fed by dissappointment, fueled by hurt and disillusionment. Sending jabs of more pain, deep and cold , into the heart of the sky. and it pours.

In the sprng it stops for a while. It sits back whimpering at first as the world unravels below it, and then stops for a while as its breath catches in its throat.

the world blooms.

the leaves flourish and spread, embracing life in every form and color.
The flowers rise trumphantly, swaying back and forth to an invisble rythem; quiet to the naked eye, transparent to the ear alert.
visible only to the heart.

they sprinkle scents as they sway, so even the air is bright beautiful and sweet.

Sometimes the skies cry softly, perhaps touched by all that is beautiful below it. perhaps lonely for it.

Still however, its sadness returns and it cries, once again. often in loud burts, complete with sobs, hiccups and thunder too.

however, nature seems patient this time of year. it takes cover on the sadder days, and blooms and sways in the skies happy lapses.

People? They huff, they puff, and with a flick open their umbrellas to keep the sky's tears away. sometimes they just race through and pretend not to notice. it cries so often , anyway. they dont like sad tears. or maybe everyone can take only so much of their own sadness.

Only children seem to have the heart to look up and smile at the sky. even on its saddest days, they look up and they celebrate it. Children, and all those strong enough to have preserved their child-like hearts.

If only more people looked up at the sky , and asked: ' but why so sad....why?'

and even on ur bluest days, you are a deep beautiful blue, and ur rain pours through me refreshes me, cleanses me through and through.

دعاء ليلة القدر

عدد 17 يونيو 1952

...حتى دعوة ليلة القدر إتغيرت

What else do we need...

The death of a movement. The rise of another.

This is an interesting article in Al Adab magazine by Ahmed Bahaa el Din Shaa'ban on the youth movement in Egypt.

http://www.adabmag.com/topics/alchabab/ahmadBaha.pdf

And here are others on youth movements in Syria, Jordan and Morrocco.

http://www.adabmag.com/alchabab.htm

He talks about how it started in 46 as a student and labor movement and how it grew in influence and power through the 50's and till the 70's when efforts to repress the students' political activism started. 'El taleb taleb 3elm we bas..'. He describes how formal policies were actually enacted to de-politicize school curriculums, and student activities, so that even 'national' activities or events were transformed to ensure de-politicization. He highlights a particular incident in the transformation, where once revolutionaries and activists were hosted at universities (from Palestine, Africa and all around the world); religious figures replace them.

Shaaban seems to theorize that the de-politicization was replaced national political interests with religion and other forms and interpretations of nationalism and so; it unravelled. Also about the sort of mystification or 'fear' that was built around politics and the idea of political activism, that carried through and killed the movements until very recently. You watch a movie like el Karnak and you don't wonder why.

Although there are many aspects of his argument that are debatable, as he proceeds to describe the death of a movement and the rise of another; i am once again astonished at the extent to which education (not only curriculum but also, the university as development of ideology and not only technocratic, and university as site for movement and organization) and culture (culture as in the core values, and the medium and context through which it is disseminated) had such an affect on both fueling and quelling the movements..

It gives us so many clues and hints to what could or should be done.
In terms of education, it is quite clear. We don't need to inflitrate it with politics and socialist , communist and capitalist strategies masalan, bas at least the values of all these ideologies should be there for people to draw upon, or not. Also i think the youth and student movements are crucial to mention, because they did play a role in the shaping of our history and our nations, and because quite simply, they are the story of our our parents' struggles. And possibly grandparents before them.

And it isn't only education. I attended a Jaheen (bahaa' jaheen) singing and poetry reading night at Townhouse gallery around 3 years ago, and the energy and enthusiasm that stirred through the audience once he started singing 'EL share3 lenna', was ubelievable..
It was mainly the generations of the 60's and 70's, but even the younger and older generations, got up , so that barely anyone was sitting down. Fists raised in the air, and all the voices raised in unison, repeating the phrase over and over, until at times the melody was lost, and the fists and arms pumped in a way that was almost militant.
It's nothing we really need to 'create', just revive.. And we have all the tools to do it.

The strength of youth/students in the movements for change also date back to the the 1919 revolution, which seems to have been sparked from the faculty of law at cairo university. At the time, an established executive committee organized by the students to plan and organize activities in the different cities and provinces, apparently met at beyt el umma (Sa'ad Zaghloul's house) twice a week, until he helped it's leader, Hassan Yasin, win a seat in parliament as a wafd state candidate. Imagine that, a student representative in parliament.

Why does it amuse you and at once make all the sense in the world?
And why does it seem so unheard of, and so far-fetched right now. What gave the students in 1930's the power and ability to influence all the members of the political parites, el Nahas included to form a united front. And they called the 30's , the years of youth...?

What did the students have in the 30's that we don't. We who now are much more aware of our rights and abilities, and have not only our experiences but those of generations and generations that have preceeded us in our countries and in so many others to recount.
In my opinion; what they, the youth members of the South African congress, the students in Iran (that also mobilized de-politicized scholars and clergymen), and the students in El Salvador (that declared universities as the 'conscience of a nation') is a vision, or more like a dream they had of how the world should be, and the will and passion to call for it or pull it through.

I am not calling for us to head to the streets, and i'm not calling for 're-politicization' either. Just thinking out-loud, genuinely wondering. If there is latent energy there then let's revive it.

If there is one thing we all learnt in school, it's that energy is never lost or gained, it is only changed.

Now all we need is a beyt el ummah :)

Seething...fear

Fear and courage.
Bravery and cowardice.
Loyalty and treachery.

All suddenly sides of the same coin, the same dice; all image and reflection.

It seems the vices battle not only in verbatim, but also in the hearts and minds of all who practice them.

Over 600 youth in prison. Who knows how many more.
A handful of who we hear regularly. They smuggle their letters out, they get their food, clothes, supplies smuggled in for them.
All those who love them working hard outside, to make them feel loved and warm inside.
How much warmth can you add to a cold cell though? How much familiarity? How much hope can you shine into it?

I imagine there are moments of darkness, or bleakness, when you know, or when you realize, when tomorrow, will be just as dark as today, if not even darker.
What if I finish all my thoughts? What if I have nothing to think of tomorrow?and if I hold out tomorrow; how about the day after, or the day after that? That's why prison writings hold so much intrigue, so much appeal. Because the situation is unlike anything anyone has experienced or can imagine. You always have the choice to choose how you want to sit, you can adjust the temperature you sit in, the amount of light you can expose yourself to, the level of noise, the degree of company.. all levels of adjustment. You can also very well control the extent to which your imagination is stimulated.

And then suddenly there is narrowness, and darkness and emptiness and sometimes even darkness. It is dirty and you cannot clean it, you will be hungry and cannot eat; hot and unable to find a breeze, cold with no blanket to cover you. Soar, aching, with no gentle hand to soothe you.

Suddenly , the choice is no longer yours.
It's just not your say anymore.
You wait,and you wait in fear.

Footsteps send a million different thoughts and fears scurrying through your imagination. Or maybe you just don't hear them anymore.

Prison always seems to be the other side. The other side of the world. The other side of freedom, of living, of happiness, but also, what we've been brought up to believe is the other side of being 'right'. Only bad people go to prison.

Highly unlikely any of us will be telling that to our children anymore.

Prison does not seem to be the place for bad guys anymore, needless to say, neither are cops any longer our salvation from the bad guys. Nor are presidents. Nor are leaders any source of inspiration.

A leader is now one who sets on the very top, and refuses to get off. Someone who sits and gives orders to those below him to make others miserable. Or does not even bother to. Someone who sits and top, and makes sure his shit makes the right 'trickle down effect' that wealth never seems to.

They are people that either practice their tyranny internally or externally.
Leaders are either people everyone hates, or people most people hate.
But a leader is sure to have someone to hate them.

And it's not the shallow kind of hate, that you have towards an ugly colour, a tacky restaurant, an unpleasant person; it is not even the kind of hate you have towards bad guys or spinach as a kid.
Leaders have developed a deep seething, bitter hate in people.

A hate that makes one ready to kill and loose everything for it.
A hate that wells from your inner most depths, a hate that is created off seeing your children starve to death, or feeling helpless to help your family prosper or offer your kids a better life. It's a hate that stems from insecurity; knowing they have made the word a worse place for you to live in. Knowing you have fear strongest, where you once had nothing to fear.

But the worst thing in the world is not the hate. It's the self-depreciating feeling that comes right before the hate. The helplessness. The pure shit.
Hearing Om Salah's fear that if Salah leaves the house and works in the market, he might be arrested by wandering police and be caught, have a pack of neela shoved down his pocket and taken to prison on account of it months on end. A fear that has her keep her now disturbed son with some sort of nervous disorder after spending months of horrific circumstances, for coming back home after work. Work that's BARELY keeping om salah, salah, ahmed and samia going.

Hearing Sheikh Moussa's bitter accounts of 'that country you call your own', and dare to imply I am part of. The state that marginalizes me, so that , not only does it claim no responsibility for me, but insinuates MY treachery. MINE. I who lives in the place that is his home, living by the traditions I was born to , ready to fight to protect myself, my family and my land at any point. I who's passion for the stretching land sands and mountains is infinitely loyal, and you who poison it and threaten to push me out of it on account of treason.

Mostapha of the Sarayya who we was presented to us as a typical case of paranoid schizophrenia. His situation is so bad off he no longer has any sense of time, the doctor tells us. His situation may be even worst than usual right now, because he has been drugged for some time. Mustapha, how long have you been here? Mustapha looks up at us in a slow wry smile.. "6 years, eleven months , 7 days and 16 hours.." The doctor smiles nervously and doesn't bother to correct him..
Question after question the doctor asks, patient after they patient; all of them staring straight ahead of them and answering the questions with as little expression, as little feeling as possible. Patient after patient as the doctor squirms in his seat and his students' scepticism grows and grows, perplexed at first, then pale, heart beat faster, lips partially open as the truth reveals itself to them. Ofcourse, the doctors files were just mixed up today.

Na'eema in Qanater prison, smiling and cheerful, adjusting her scarf on her head every now and then, her smile sweet , her face open, her eyes asking a million questions, and waiting patiently to alternate on of your questions with one of hers. She was in there with murder, with a wide smile. Her husband's cousin. Her husband was paralyzed and he tried to rape her daughter.. She had seen him try before.. what were you expecting, that I sit back and watch her scream? Straight on his head. He crumpled to the ground. Prison is wonderful. She has many friends. IT's the day she is released into her husband's family's wrath that she fears most. She is safer here.

And all those in the 50's and 60's and 70's that sat in their houses, bent over their chairs, weeping silently praying that they won't hear the knocks on their doors, that their loved ones would come back safely, or that it would just STOP hurting.

And all those that lay inside prisons, no longer counting the days, knowing that none will come for them.

We have lead a good and secure life, yet we fear for our lives terribly. We have locks on our doors, we have friends of friends of friends, in all the high and low places that cushion our falls. We know we will never be forgotten, that at least a group, if not nations, will be hot on our pursuit, if we fall, or disappear for a while. And yet we experience a fear. And it chills us. And our adrenaline pumps. And we shudder, shake the thought off, and try to think of a safer way around it.

And the man that stays up at night, praying his door won't be broken down one day, and he will helplessly watch his son be carried away, his own daughter hurt or raped, and his wife, his salvation and his source of warmth and comfort, violated if only by a touch.

All those people that are picked off the street when a 'retard' attacks a church, or when people are murdered mutilated and castrated in menya, or when almost a hundred people are blown to smitharines in Sharm.
it is enough, not it is CRIME that these atrocities go by unpunished, but to have the wrong people prosecuted is committing crime after crime after crime…

And then you blame people for trying to live?
You complain that there is theft and dirt and corruption and misery…
You complain the children don't go to school and walk around the street barefoot and that cab drivers charge ridiculously high rates. You complain that the men on the streets harass the women, that the women cover up inch over inch, until they can no longer breathe.

We have for the first times in our lives, experienced fear. If even at a fleeting thought of doing something that might involve us risking our lives.
And what of those who have, who LIVE their lives in it.
Who are helpless or powerless, who are victims before a single risk is taken.

Who scream 'la2 ya beyh!!' and start to weep like children, once they are grabbed by the lapel and as they receive their first slap.. not because it hurts, and not because their pride hurts, but because they have been expecting this moment for years, for lifetimes!

And it starts early on.. as children wait quietly at school for their turn to get a beating. If they can't read, because the letters don't' speak up to them as they do most people, or if they can't approve to pay the troll's tole. Resist. They were told in a workshop. Ask why. Tell them how it hurts you.
I can't spoke up a fifteen year old boy, before countless of others. I can't he stood up and said quickly, his voice shaking, choking as he tried to explain. The moment I am beaten , everything inside me starts to shake. Everything. And everything inside me is closed tight. Even if I am asked to speak, my mouth does not open, it is clenched close. And I know I have to sit down quickly. I have to sit down very quickly because if I don't, then everyone will see me urinate. Yes! It still happens to me! I can't resist!

We do have a lot to fear. We have a lot to fear because we have not felt fear before, and so we start at the very bottom of the ladder. And we experience it in it's rawest and simplest of senses. We have not had it for years and so the possibilities have not built themselves inside us. It starts very slowly and it builds with question mark after question mark, and yet it remains, always, constantly, JUST out of reach.

But what if when our fear disappears. When we experience all there is to fear, and we settle down. Or when we realize all the fearful consequences and manage to secure ourselves.
What of when a different leader takes over.
Someone new. Someone fancy, someone old, someone blue.

And if we can mute our fears enough so our children are not afraid. If we DO manage to protect them. What of all those that are powerless, that remain at the mercy of the known or the power'ful'. When will their fear erupt.
When will it implode.
And what,
If it explodes.

Leaving Soatica

I smile, I hug, I nod emphatically, I feign the ecstasy and the relief. But my smile extends no further, no deeper than my lips' embrace.

I feel a strange sort of tiredness. My eyes are wide open, my senses alert, I'm quick on to console, to converse.
And yet something inside me slumps; tugging slowly and relentlessly at my attention.

What now?
I'm leaving soatica.

I studied at soas this year. And how feeble a word like studied can be.

the world has grown so much bigger and at times so much smaller, so scary and yet so promising, so dark and yet so blindingly and alarmingly light.
how else would it seem when your every sense , and every ounce of intellect is stimulated, challenged and consumed?

but now I finished. I was skating and I was soaring and I was gliding; and suddenly I stop. And the word stands before me, waiting for me to explore it myself.

I had left it at the door step as I hopped into the building, and sat listlessly at the SOAS bar, in an array of dim-lit color; surrounded by revolutionary fists, posters of Marx, dreadlocks, sweet smelling smoke, endless announcements and calls for rebels and revolutionaries, for all those who are armed for the plight 'to change'.
Listlessly waiting for the music that escapes the juke box and threads its way across the room, and across continents and decades to tickle me, to embrace me.

I left it at the door step as I hopped into my class room, and sat listening, hoping it would not end, or wishing it would so I would give my Brownian thoughts a chance to settle down, to stop bouncing off each other, and attempting to break through the limits of my mind.. For my brain to attempt to caress, caress, but never pacify them.

I left it at the door step as I raced to the library, to devour one book after the other, one article after another, shaking my head in wonder and disbelief as I grabbed a notebook in between and scribbled 'unbelievable ya alia!' as I scribbled myself some notes to remember. Where had I been as this happened through the world? How had I not known..

I came back to the door step and avoided the world; as I ran back home or went out to another world, one that was kinder but so much less real.

As I ran into comforting arms as I hated myself for failing me. why couldn't I seem to learn?
I left it at the door step as I walked out and around it... I would deal with it later, i'm only just starting to understand it.

London around soas, snowed on the brightest and shiniest days; you lifted ur face for a sun-kiss, and braced yourself as the snow flakes, tickled ur nose, caressed ur cheeks and wandered into ur unassuming ears.
London around SOAS bloomed in the most beautiful of scents and the brightest of colors in the spring, and the coldest and chilliest gusts of wind in the winter.

People in SOAS challenged the world. Colors do not match here. Hair meets the standards, colors, shades, textures of beauty as every spot on the world might see them. Skies come in colors. They also come in shapes, shades, layers, lengths and sizes.

Students fill the bottom of the steps, crowding the world I left behind, in protests at sit ins, when a librarian is threatened, when a fellow student mistreated, when a country is bombed.

the bulletin boards crowd with competing events. Every flier, poster, picture sprawls as widely as possible attempting to catch more of your attention than its neighbor, predecessor or child. Every event promising, challenging, angry, exciting, sad or exhilarating. And not an hour without one.

London in SOAS is Iran, Aceh, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Poland, Palestine, Germany, India, Tibet, Algeria, and Egypt, London in SOAS was home.

The library in SOAS overflows with riches from Faten 7amama, Empire, Marx, Gramsci, Fouccault, Toqueville, Sherine Ebadi, and so many many more..

A year now. How could so much have happened in a year?

When every concept, ideology, understanding is 'unpackaged', when after every lecture you emerge perplexed , with question marks, and after every reading, you ask yourself again; where was I? Why didn't I know? How could I not have seen it?

How much has happened in a year.
And then I realize, it has not even been one...

And so my intellect has grown; the sands, the fairy dust, the words and the drops of water, are still scattered in my mind, lifted in one breeze of thought after another, as they twirl in an array of color and sensation. Not a single one discernible from the other, each adding to the others depth, color, texture and frenzied motion. All emancipated and yet restricted to the limits of my mind at once.

They no longer bombard however, they blend, and they glide, shifting from one shape and one form to the next; more gracefully however, and I am at peace with their randomness.

The world still awaits at the doorstep.
And I flirt with it.
and I flit and fleet in and out of it.
I fear it, and I wish to embrace it.

But it's the gate to SOAS, and the gates and the windows that SOAS have build inside me that I don't want to leave behind.

And so I smile. I hug, and I nod emphatically. But my smile extends no further than my lips embrace. And something inside me tugs slowly and relentlessly.

A life in color..

“Egyptian Landscapes”

Celebrating 50 years of Tapestry Weaving at the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre, Cairo

'Human freedom never has as much meaning and value as when it allows the creative power of the child to come into action’ Ramsis Wissa. Founder of the Ramsis Wissa Wassef Art Centre.


As I pushed the heavy glass door that led into the gallery, I contemplated the blurry array of colors that shone through it, and held my breath in anticipation of what lay beyond it.
Inside, I was greeted with a strong gust of color, tanned faces, noisy markets, the ebbing Nile, breath taking nature, and the faint scent of heavy wool; all laced with the with the delicate melody of Oud chords and the jingle of tambourines. With this, I was home.

The Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center’s tapestry exhibition “Egyptian Landscapes” celebrated 50 years of beautiful tapestry and enjoyed a vibrant success at the Brunei gallery in the School of Oriental and African Studies. The exhibition was inaugurated on the 19th of January and is expected to continue until the 18th of March.
On Display was 50 years of work from the Art centre as well as two representative weavers to tell their stories. For at the heart of the Gallery were Sabah and Reda, who sat in a glow of pride, boasting their talents, as their fingers danced across the threads of their looms.

Ramses Wissa, once a Cariene architect, worked with the philosophy that “every human being is born an artist”, that every human being was talented, given the opportunity to express it. The Wassef’s (Ramses and his wife, Sophie) ‘experiment in creativity’ lead to their starting a workshop in Haraneyya village in Cairo, where children with no particular artistic talents, and without much experiences in the field of tapestry, were given the opportunity to create tapestry in an uninhibited environment that ‘encouraged’ rather than instructed, and inspired to produce freely without the adult criticism that limited creativity. Ramses Wissa also taught the weavers to choose, as well as create their own colors. Thus, with the use of plant and insect extracts for colors, the craft was their own from it’s start to its finish.
Their Legacy is now continued through their daughters Suzanne and Yoanna Wassef.

One of the Centre’s prominent artists; Aly Selim joined the Wissa Wassef Centre at age 13 in 1961. Initially, Aly was turned away due to lack of space for a new student, however having returned to the centre with a tiny tapestry piece produced using left-over wool from his sister’s loom; there was no turning him away.

Aly’s engaging piece “The Hymn of Akhenaton”, reads as softly and as beautifully as the poem that is its namesake. Aly struggled with the challenge of portraying the different times of day in one picture as they were eloquently described in the poem. However, with Suzanne’s help, Aly was able to use the rising of the birds and departure from their trees at day break, returning at sunset, and disappearing in them at night along with the colors associated with each period to portray the almost musical transitions.



Karmia Aly, another talent, started with the Centre at the young age of 11 in 1955, and her work mainly portrayed her love for folklore. Karima’s impressive works include “Battle on Horseback” which reflected Karima’s inner struggle through the array of colors and motion reflected by an epic of battle fought by Bedouins and Fellaheen on horseback. Karima had used her craft to express her troubles allowing the clamour of swords and angry hooves to speak her inner feelings.

Karima’s other work, portrays the peace and tranquility that are her character in her tranquil blues and soft yellows.

The Egyptian Landscape exhibition presented us with true Egyptian talent using true Egyptian heritage. The materials used, the choice of colors, and the craft itself is true to Ancient Egyptian, Christian and Muslim tradition, and portrayed through folklore, humor, tragedy and magnificent beauty the stories and day to day lives of the every-day Egyptian.

This was not merely the story of the success of the socially conscious artistic endeavor. This was the story of a country, a culture, a heritage, and a celebration of natural inborn talent. A celebration by all those who’s lives , dreams, emotions were expressed through the tapestries, and a celebration by all those who were able to experience, and live them through.

For more, please visit; http://www.wissa-wassef-arts.com/