I Read Another Book

This is not the book that am reading those days, I was actually reading "Orlando" of Virginia Woolf, and I was so excited about it although it is a very hard slow book.

But as I was looking at the books in the tiny book sale in the Faculty of Arts I saw this book "Om Hashem's Lamp". I have heard about it from a poet who once passed by B-san's office. I did not exactly like the poet or consider him a "credible book recommendation resource" but I liked the book's title, and I had this childish kick that goes like this "I don't want people talking about a book that I don't know".

So I paid three JD's for it and read half of it while waiting for my father to come pick me up from the gym, and the other half when I was on the bus from Amman to Irbed.

It is a Meh book. But it is also a book that you should read, just to remember how issues were approached in the literature of the twentieth century, the way they perceived the other, and the way writers shamelessly addressed the reader into what they thought is correct and "righteous".

Baaaad old times. 

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شيطنات الطفلة الخبيثة Las Travesuras de la Niña Mala

I Finished a Book

I know, it sounds pathetic, to just yell to the world: I FINISHED A BOOK..

But let's be a bit honest here, ever since I started my masters year I started having this short temper for reading. I must have started 20 books and have not finished any of them.

And while I can blame the books, I just blamed myself, because I could not concentrate, I had too much to do, and I encountered the titles of too many books in the course of a normal day, to the extent that I was reading more than one book at the same time without actually reaching the end of any of them.

But with "Las Traveuras De La Niña Mala" things were simply different. Of course I am different myself, I have been so for a while now. I am waking up early, going to the gym, dieting, saving money and reading with a soldier's persistence. But the book, Oh dear, it is just a good book, it just spreads the pages infront of you and calls you to come digging through the events, the words, the surprises and the music of Spanish words.

This post is not about the book. It is just about how happy I felt when I turned the last page. Of course I was a bit melancholic for losing all the friends I met throughout the pages, but it was a moment of regaining myself definition.

I am a girl that reads, this is what I have done throughout my ENTIRE life, actually I am not good at anything else (except for writing and translating, which is ,in a matter of fact, is a simple variation of reading itself) and now I feel like I am back to the top of the world.

How tiny does everything seem!   

Dear Turkey :)

Dear Turkey, Today I went to my nutritionist and found out that I have already lost all the kilos that I gained during the two months I spent there.

I am so happy, proud of my effort, and looking forward for more.  

Resistance

If I had seen this shot, taken anywhere else in the world, I would have said that it is pointless rhetoric that does not change the reality one inch. 

Although I always have believed in arts (literature, music, painting, sculpture, theater, cinema etc etc) but I never believed in the artistic initiatives that were presented under the definition of "acts of resistance''. To me they seemed like initiatives of spoiled kids who have nothing better to offer. 

But this, in Al-Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Damascus, this is different. It's just a sign that life has not stopped. In one of the most catastrophic sites of the world today, standing there with a violin and a piano you mock the slaughterer and that on its own is a pure act of resistance.  

Erasmus Reminder: Disappointment! !

Today I got this from Hermes Erasmus Scholarship. As if I needed a reminder to finish filling up a scholarship's form!! 

I was told earlier by the scholarship's team that I am not eligible for it, for I stayed more than 12 months in the European Union during the last five years, therefore I may not even apply. 

I was down for a few days after it, but not exactly. I am so homesick and willing to go back to Spain in whatever possible way, but still I fell like I have unfinished business in Amman. 

This time, it feels different. And although I have never been fed up with the city and the people as much as I am fed up now, but I just feel like waiting a little before I get on the next plane and flee everything. 

I don't know why, but maybe I am growing older, and maybe I want to accomplish something here, in work and in my social circle, or maybe simply because my friends have not left the city. 

When I think of next September I just suffocate, they are going in all directions, to the States,  England, Turkey and Australia. If things go as planned for them, then I would be truly mad on each and every scholarship or employer who says that am not eligible for I don't know what reason. 

What Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: MUCH!

Listen to this
http://umano.me/c/r1pKL/what-the-most-successful-people-do-before-breakfast
Or Read it
http://theweek.com/article/index/255588/what-the-most-successful-people-do-before-breakfast


I must have listened to this article almost 5 or 6 times, one of them with Uncle Wael (whom I have always considered as the person with the toughest willpower I ever knew).

It is always good to find an article like this one, that would motivate you to become a person - as my Mom says - "Worthy of the life you were given".

But at this point of my life, I needed a pat on my shoulder, because I have NEVER came close to fully enjoy my potentials and my energy as I am doing now.

It was a very very personal and surprisingly weird motive. After all those years of procrastination love came and gave me the slap that I have always needed!

I never thought I would say this, but: My name is Evaluna, and I was down with love.

I realized this fact the hard way. I suddenly felt like I no longer have a life of my own, that I postponed all the things I consider important to me and finally I reached a point where I was subconsciously sabotaging my relationship.

By then, I had THE TALK with B-san, my wise and 6 years elder great friend. She put me on the couch in their salon and bombarded my laziness camps with a motivating discourse about "focus".

 She must have said the word "focus" over 20 times. And as she knew me very well she, she was able to make a mental list of the things that I have to work on, translation, interpretation, Spanish, Russian, reading, saving money, going to the gym, solving my obesity problem and work on my writing.

Those have always been my priorities, but this word had a vague meaning apparently! Because in spite of them being priorities I barely did anything about them.

I wasted money although I made a lot of it. I started books and did not actually finish them. I started writing novels and I left them halfway. I always registered in gyms and stopped going after a week or two. I wasted time on the internet. I left hard things and took simpler tasks.

And Suddenly: I simply STOPPED.

I deactivated my Facebook account two months ago, and in that moment I said to myself -for the very first time- it might be for good this time.

I started going to the gym. I have been going for a month now. Every SINGLE day, no excuses accepted. I assigned time of pure solitude for reading, writing my diary, and working on a writing project.

Now I wake up earlier even on Fridays, and finding this article randomly looked like a cosmic sign of approval for the change I achieved after almost 19 years of trying.

Now the real challenge is to keep up the good work. I won't be making any promises to myself, but at least now I know that willpower has a muscle, and after I got it tough and hard it would be so heart breaking to let wither again.

Here are some quotes that I liked and posted on my Instagram:


"Willpower," Baumeister and co-author John Tierney write, "like a muscle, becomes fatigued from overuse."


People who were serious about exercise did it in the mornings. At that point, emergencies had yet to form, and they would only have to shower once. As Gordo Byrn, a triathlon coach, once told me, "There's always a reason to skip a four o'clock workout, and it's going to be a good reason, too."


P.S: Well, I hate that there is no embedding option on Umano, but this could be modified in future versions of on of the most useful applications in the history of AppLandia :p 

Parts Of One's Story That Shouldn't Be Forgotten

The main use of my blog for me is to remember what I was doing in past moments of my life.

Today I was thinking that I am always keeping track of the good days, good ideas, good books and good experiences.

But then, I stopped to wonder; it isn't the good experiences that make me who I am. They are rather the gloomy moments and the hardships that form the person who I am.

Ever since I was very young I had this pact with myself that I will not keep a record of the down moments,  so they may not get to me when I reread them.

But as I am getting older I started rethinking this strategy. I always go back to my diaries and my blog to remember how I exactly perceived things when they first happened. 

When I don't mention hardships I deprive myself the possibility to look at them later, when I am at least one day older and a tiny bit wiser.

So this picture is for the future me. Just to remember that at the tenth day of the new year I was alone in the farm room looking at the ceiling patterns and enduring the biggest pain of my life.  But guess what, dear me, I survived!

And As I Was Getting Started To Translate

Tell me that this is not the universe trying to tell me something :p

New Years Crap

No offence to the tweet's writer, but come oooooooon! 

I am a positive person, I bore my own self with my positivity, but I simply don't have the guts to say this to people, right to their faces. 

Ps: Do we say "tweet's writer" or is there a word coined out there that I have never heard of? 

Of Mothers

It just brought tears to my eyes as I was reading it in the kitchen to my mother and her guests. Not only for the huge agony reflected in his words, but for loving his mother for her intelligence and intellect, and leaving her delicious food for the fourth line. 

Aida: The Infinite Possibilities

Ever since I started watching "Aida" I had a "meh" feeling. I got to Aida after watching 5 season of Aqui No Hay Quien Viva and all the available seasons of La Que Se Avecina.

It is not that "Aida" is not good, but I got some kind of "Aqui No Hay Quien Viva" addiction, that made all other shows seem boring and nowhere close to attractive.

But I was show-less while I was in Turkey, and I just got to the conclusion that I cant survive living on my own if I was not accompanied by characters of a TV show -sue me- so I had to start Aida and go through the first season without actual interest.

But today as I was watching the 11th episode in the second season, I felt that in this specific episode the writers had put some actual effort in making it like no other.

The episode went along with two story lines, one about Aida being in a relationship with Mauricio, or being in a relationship with Chema.

The two possibilities were shown to us consecutively, until we go back to the first scene when she tries to change the way she drinks her coffee, which supposedly lead her to falling for one of them.

At the end of the episode she takes her coffee as always, and she sits in the bar, and then there is wide shot of the entire place where she is sitting to the side and the lights blare in the bar and the episode ends.

The possibilities... they are there, and we are so miserably limited, why can't we see what might have been under our noses all the time? Why not?

The Best Friends Ever

Today, I was simply ridiculously happy.

Nawaf, Ali and I went to have breakfast at Doa'as place. The idea was there for relatively a long time, but as I was not in the country those last two months, the breakfast was postponed various times, and I had the old feeling of worry when two groups of my friends do merge.

I don't know... I am so talkative and I can always come up with "something to talk about" but still I always worry before such gatherings.

But I could not imagine how good it was, and let me put aside the great food, and the great Najeeb Mahfouz movie that we watched on Rotana Zaman, and just focus on the two gifts that Nawaf and Ali brought.

They got her a somehow purple frog and the zoo animal's plastic figurines!! She was thrilled about the gifts (well, thrilled is not exactly the word that goes with Doa'a but let say she was excited) and I just sat there and wondered: How on God's name, does people in their twenties get the idea of bringing such a gift?!

When I was younger I made some kind of a promise to myself that I will not become an "adult", that I'll never be boring, repetitive, predictable or mature in the negative sense of the word. And for a long time I thought that I kept the promise, but it was until I became good friends with Ali (above all Ali) when I realized that I grew some how old and lazy.

What does it take to come up with a silly yet innovative gift, and to actually go and get it and present it solemnly and have a good laugh about it?

The best friends ever are the ones who never let you feel old, act old or think old, and this is why I believe that I have the world's best friends. 

A workbook on mental illnesses: My Very First Bulky English Translation

Lately I have interpreted a workshop of 8 days on chronic mental illnesses, in which a curriculum was taught regarding how to make a patients life as good as possible given that those illnesses have no "cure''.

It was a very enlightening experience, and although the workshop took place on snowy days, in which arriving to the hotel was a daily adventure but it was worth every minute.

The participants came from all over Jordan. They were either psychologists or social workers, some of them worked in mental clinics (turned out that there is a mental clinic in every governorate in Jordan) and many came from Fuheis mental hospital. And there was this very interesting lady who worked in a jail, to psychoanalyze the inmates!! (Is not that a cooool job for a novelist?!)

The speaker Dr Carol simply a very intellectual, smart, well educated sweetheart. She is simply the one you would want to take care of your loved ones if they ever get an illness of this kind.

She emphasized a lot on the social stigma upon schizophrenic people, and she was presenting realistic and applicable examples all the time, which for me -as an interpreter- is something I rarely witness. I am always attending conferences and meetings where people talk about "strategies'', "policies", "approaches" and "methods", nothing was ever as real as this workshop.

When it ended, it still continued for me because I had to redo the translation of the work book presented in the workshop. The first translation was a total mess and I was offered the job I got the usual scare, you know, all of those technical psychological terms, but I was like: If I had interpreted the topic during 8 days, I must be the most capable person of translating the document.

And so I started working for an entire week. It was such a short time, but hey, I believe that a close dealine is the best inspiration.

I worked for days in the university's library, and I was lamenting -all the freaking time- the miserable Arabic resources for a topic as important as mental illnesses. After a long search I found a somehow encyclopedia online, which is the fruit of an individual's effort, it helped me a lot (I always feel guilty when I find shortage on the Arabic content on any topic,,, but this is unjustified guilt, I am not a psychologist!!)

The workbook is now done and sent back to the council that hired me, where it is gonna be used as a base for interviews with schizophrenic patients in order to evaluate their cases and to offer them the medical and social support they need.

Besides the great feeling that translation usually gives me, this time I felt like I served the community .. I just love being a Translator,,, the best job in the world.

Here, see the words I checked in the dictionary ...  

Wikipedias Featured Article For Today

Things You See on Twitter

Of Lovers and Spouses: Amen!

“

فالعاشقان هما زوجان دائما؛ سواء قبل المعبد أم لم يقبل، جمعهما بيت أم لم يجمعهما. 

بل سواء قررا هما ذلك أم لم يقررا.. فقيس زوج ليلى، وإن لم يتزوجا. 

وفي هذا المنطق؛ العشق يسخر كثيرا من الكاهن في الحلال والحرام.” 

― عبد الرزاق الجبران, مبغى المعبد

Feeling Like a Child: Turkish

I registered in a Turkish Language course last week, and classes will start this coming Sunday.
When  I paid the fees I was too disappointed when the secretary told me that I will not be handed the books until Sunday.

I have been hearing drum rolls inside my own head ever since I registered and I cant wait until Sunday comes ...  A new Language is a new person, and Turkish is not a only a "New Language" but it is a memory of 40 days of "linguistic vagueness" and a hard and long experience of not being understood.

I remember that evening in Istanbul when my friend Ufuk came from Ankara and we got to see each other in my very last night in the city. We sat there and talked about the language, the countries and ethnicities that formed the Ottoman empire, and the originally Arab words in old Ottoman and in current Turkish.

In that very night I felt my traditional "linguistic greed" kicking in, and ever since I knew that I am doing this! I am learning Turkish :))   

Home

It was a transition of my body from one country to the other. I felt pain in my shoulders as I dragged around my heavy bag, and I felt unease in my soul as I left my "loneliness" behind me and came back to be surrounded with dozens of friends and relatives.

It was a complicated kind of restlessness and anxiety, I felt like a nomad ever since  I left my house in Istanbul until got to my parent's house in Amman. But even after I got rid of the suitcase and the "stuff" I still felt lost and tired.

When I crossed the narrow sidewalk towards you, when I saw the slight quiver in your eyebrows when you recognized my face in the crowd, then, only then I felt that I was finally home.

فلتأذن لي بأن أراك

 وقد خرجت مني وخرجت منك،

 سالماً كالنثر المصفى 

على حجر يخضر أو يصفر في غيابك.