New Profile Picture: Splendidly Disfigured

This is an old picture that I stumbled upon today. I sit it as a profile picture. It was bigger but I had to crop it for Facebook dimensions' restrictions, and when it became square it kind of emphasized my open mouth and my yellowish teeth.

I stared at it for a moment, feeling all self conscious, but then something in my head told me: This is how smiles are! They are not supposed to be perfect, and the harder you are laughing the more "disfigured" your face will look.

So I kept it and I am so happy with it. Yet, somewhere, down in my heart it makes me sad, it is not that I grew old, but I am no longer a college kid surrounded with friends effortlessly. I am still surrounded with friends 4 years later, but I feel the "effort" the "phone calls" the "waiting" and the "cancellations".

I guess I will give myself a 10 minutes wallowing period, so let's start. 

A Song About a Lady Reading!

I was in my office trying to do anything useful, when my neighbor Ibrahim came in and he said he wanted to show me something. He gave me the name of the song (posted below) and for a moment I was like: Perfect! One more "modern" track with endless 4 minutes (There is nothing that I can do about this! I have a grandma's musical taste, and I get drowsy when I listen to new stuff)

But when the song started it drew my attention (BIG achievement).

It describes a man observing a woman reading a book in a coffee house. He was not observing how "she looked" as she read but rather described what he thought "she felt" as she read, and that -ladies and gentlemen- is a first!

Lately I have been irritated by the lame glorification of "intellectual women''. Too many Facebook posts of women who are "suffering" because they have a lot of books that they have not read yet (time management issues if you ask me) and posts about women who just can't stop themselves from "buying more books" although they should not (again, if you ask me: women taking their shopping disorders from shoes to books. Self-control issues).

 But the most appalling of all are the posts with pictures or paintings of girls with glasses who are "engrossed'' (Engrossed?! Is that even a word? sounds like the feeling you get when you do something Gross) in reading a book, with a caption of some horny guy glorifying girls who read, and the same girls (who think that their pathetic reading routine is actually READING) showering him with likes and comments without realizing at all that "the girl with glasses who is engrossed in reading" is a common porn movie plot (Hahah! Did I just say plot? there's no plot, the girl sees the man virility and she throws the book away, this is as complicated as the plot gets).

And you know? I don't want to go all "perfect" on anyone, if a guy and a girl want to play the game of attraction based on his "interest in her intellectualism" so be it, who am I to judge. But what is more disgusting (and yes, the term is "disgust'') when girls present themselves as intellectuals to land boyfriends, and therefore potential husbands.

 Remember when girls used to wear extra make up and extra high heels to draw a man's attention? Well, those girls were at least honest with themselves, they knew what they wanted and they went out there and got it. But what is the deal with girls now who want to have their "5 minutes of leading the public opinion" before landing a guy and dwelling in his laundry room for the rest of their lives?

Why does this annoy me? It is because reading is a phase, and their next phase is: "Writing" and that is just offending to everyone who is still sane. It's a public service to nip their intellectual longings in the bud.

God I got carried away ... 

Back to the song: We need this song, and many other similar songs, where a woman is observed while she is actually reading, and not meanwhile she's orchestrating the scene of her reading longing that some man might observe her, invite her for something or even mention her in a novel or a poem. 

Observe this painting. 

I accidentally found it on the jungle of the internet, read more about it here. 

The article mentioned an interesting term "Urban alienation". 

I don't know, maybe it is just me, but this is what reading is supposed to do to a person. Reading alienates you, it does not put you in the spot light. If it does, the lights will flash your eyes and you will find yourself participating in the constant parade of  "pseudo-intellectuals'' that is roaming the worlds corners for a while now. 

Over and Out   

ِA Turkish Song: Allah Allah

Yesterday I made a new friend in a party. An interesting girl from Turkey. We stood there making little talk about Turkey and it all came back to me, I remembered my time in Turkey in 2013 and my Turkish classes in the first few months of 2014.

I know I have had a lot of linguistic flings and affairs, but the love I have for every language is true, and I know for a fact that I will find a moment in my life in which I'll go back to each and every language of them until I excel in all of them. They are like my kids and I love them all.

So here,,,
Enjoy the translation of Allah Allah sarki that I accidentally found on Google. May God bless those generous anonymous translators who give us those jewels.

Allah Allah

Ne güzel yaratmışsın çiftedir beni
Görünce aşık oldum eyledi deli. (x2)

Gülünce gözlerini, saçının her telini,
Tutunca ellerini, ölesim gelir, ölesim gelir
Ölesim gelir, ölesim gelir.
Ölesim gelir, ölesim gelir.

Allah Allah Allah Allah bu nasıl sevmek.
Allah Allah Allah Allah bu nasıl gülmek.
Allah Allah Allah Allah bu nasıl sevmek.
Allah Allah Allah Allah bu nasıl gülmek.
Bu nasıl sevmek bu nasıl gülmek.
İnsan değil bu sanki bir melek.

Gözlerine bakınca deryayı gördüm.
Sevmeyi, sevilmeyi onunla bildim. (x2)

Gülünce gözlerini, saçının her telini,
Tutunca ellerini, ölesim gelir, ölesim gelir
Ölesim gelir, ölesim gelir.
Ölesim gelir, ölesim gelir.

Allah Allah Allah Allah bu nasıl sevmek.
Allah Allah Allah Allah bu nasıl gülmek.
Allah Allah Allah Allah bu nasıl sevmek.
Allah Allah Allah Allah bu nasıl gülmek.
Bu nasıl sevmek bu nasıl gülmek.
İnsan değil bu sanki bir melek.

الله الله

كم هو جميل خلقك لتوأم روحي
عندما رأيته جعلني مجنونا به واصبحت عاشقا

عندما يضحك والمس عينيه وكل خصلة من شعره الحريري
وعندما امسك يديه أحتضر
احتَضر , احتَضر
احتَضر , احْتَضر

الله الله الله الله كيف يكون هذا الحب
الله الله الله الله كيف تكون هذه الابتسامة
الله الله الله الله كيف يكون هذا الحب
الله الله الله الله كيف تكون هذه الابتسامة
كيف يكون هذا الحب وكيف تكون هذه الابتسامة
هذا ليس انسان كأنه ملاك

عندما نظرت الى عينيه رأيت فيها البحار
تعلمت معه أن اَحِب واٌحَب

عندما يضحك والمس عينيه وكل خصلة من شعره الحريري
وامسك يديه ااموت
اصبح ميت اصبح ميت
اصبح ميت اصبح ميت

الله الله الله الله كيف يكون هذا الحب
الله الله الله الله كيف تكون هذه الابتسامة
الله الله الله الله كيف يكون هذا الحب
الله الله الله الله كيف تكون هذه الابتسامة
كيف يكون هذا الحب وكيف تكون هذه الابتسامة
هذا ليس انسان , كأنه ملاك

Taken from http://lyricstranslate.com/en/allah-allah-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D9%87-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D9%87.html-0#ixzz3g33wl4d9 

Omar and Faten: Together At The End

May Both Rest In Peace. 

A Poem I Accidentally Translated: كلمات سبارتكوس الأخيرة

Yesterday, as I was following the news of the Greek referendum, I remembered this old poem of Amal Dunqul, and as I wanted my Spanish friends to read it I translated it on my phone and posted it on Facebook. Amazing words of wisdom, written sometime in the past and they fit the present like a glove:

المجد للشيطان .. معبود الرياح

من قال " لا " في وجه من قالوا " نعم "

من علّم الإنسان تمزيق العدم

من قال " لا " .. فلم يمت ,

وظلّ روحا أبديّة الألم !

أمل دنقل

Alabado sea Satanás 

El adorado por los vientos

El que dijo "No" en la cara de quienes dijeron "Sí"

Quien enseñó al hombre a romper la nada

Quien dijo "No" y no se murió

Y permaneció como alma dolida eternamente

Amal Dunqul - Poeta egipcio

To read the rest of the poem in Arabic please Click Here.

Fields of Gravity

The best advice I ever got about love was from my grandmother, right before I got married. She said, "Marriage goes through cyclical phases, it's almost like the movements of planets. Sometimes you're so close, the two of you, your orbits are in synch, and sometimes you move so far away from each other, you feel you'll never reconnect, never reenter each other's orbits, you're too far apart. The trick to marriage is having faith in the reconnection, waiting for the inevitable closeness again." This was in 1994. She died a couple of years later. My marriage lasted 12 years. I never forgot this advice; we moved far away from each other many times, and I waited it out, and sure enough, we came back into synch again. And then at the end, we moved too far apart to ever reenter each other's orbits, out of each other's fields of gravity, and that's when I knew it was over. —Melissa Chapman

berlin-artparasites

Bedtime Story: Something I Copied from Facebook

bedtime story:

“Stop. You can’t love me because you’re lonely, or because I am the only one who doesn’t piss you off. I want to piss you off, I want to get on your fucking nerves. I don’t want the responsibility of always being your rock. I will try, but I’m a mess, too. I lie, I sleep too much and I don’t like children under the age of 6, really. I don’t even know if I want kids because I’m selfish, and mothers can’t be selfish once they decide to carry another life.

I’m always looking for the rain to come so I trip over my own feet. I know exactly what the air smells like before a storm.
Before you fall in love with me, I want you to know that I cry a lot because it feels good, and I masturbate at least 4 times a week, and you might fall out of love with me before either of us are ready for it.I have no experience with this. I’m trying to be brave and smart but its almost impossible to be both at the same time.
You can’t love me like a fire escape. Sometimes I will be the match, or the smoke under the door. I don’t know what I’m doing, all I know is that we all catch fire sometimes, before we even get warm.
Before you fall in love with me, I want you to know that there’s a 50% chance that this won’t work, that one of us will wind up hating the other. I will try to keep your head above water, but sometimes I’ll need help, too.
I can’t be your savior, and I don’t expect you to be mine. Just watch me unfold and I’ll watch you unfold, too. We’ll get drunk and tell each other everything. I know that’s cheating but maybe it’ll be alright. Maybe we won’t wake up embarrassed.

I am going to fall in love with you, too, feet first. Maybe we’ll slow dance off a building together, maybe we’ll have forgotten each other’s names by this time next year. I don’t care, the sky is gray with or without you, so I’m not going to look up anymore, I’m going to look ahead .”
—Before You Fall in Love with Me, Caitlyn S.

good night
Watercolor by Brendan Shea

Dear Blog, Remember me?

Dear Blog,

Remember me? It's me Evaluna.

I shall confess that I was sucked into the shit whole known as Facebook. And yesterday I had a Facebook-comment-section-conversation with an old and dear friend-blogger, and we both agreed that we are letting our ideas drown in that drain, we don't get to document them, reread them, look at them and don't get me started on "having them read by actual audience".

I know that my blog isn't a rock concert, it had always had an intimate number of followers, but I am now convinced more than ever, that being read by total strangers who read thoroughly is better than being read by the so-called Facebook-friends who see only what they want to see and comment what they had in mind even before reading my post.

People are entitled to their crappy opinions of course, but I am just bored, drained and exhausted.
Yesterday I had to block my own mother :\ and it just struck me. I realized that maybe maybe, I am one of those who can't share their opinions "out there" with their identity totally revealed.

Blocking her was no smooth process, she got so furious and she yelled and cursed, but then, when I found myself on Facebook without her I found myself listing my name in a signed petition against the same issue that she was so offensive about (that led to me blocking her afterwards) I felt like a free animal in the meadows!

It's just stunning ... I love her and everything but I believe I got to that phase in my life where I feel like I'm bearing my mother on my shoulders all the time, and life just does not work that way. Her beliefs are fragile and I am young and strong, I can't keep tuning down my energy to pamper her set of values (that I don't share ,,, let's just put it that way!)

Offft, I was not supposed to go on an on about this, but this is what I felt like saying when I saw the broad Blogger window.

I really missed it here, and I feel bad for every thought that I didn't document here.

****   

So for now, I am in my office, I got here 8 am, and I absorbed the silence, given that silence is one of the most underrated resources there is in the world. Now I am going to go stuff my head in my notebook and prepare my Hebrew class. I will come back with more Hebrew details in a post that I shall write soon. 

Over and Out

Visas: Modern Form of Institutional Humilliation

I have been going in circles for a month and a half now, just because I feel nostalgic to the city of my dreams,   where I am planning to spend 15 days!!

For 15 days of relaxation a human being has to go through a month or so of stress. Well maybe stress is never my case, but it is a prolonged procedure of waiting and hoping. It's just like making a wish on a falling star!

I was told that today was the day in which I'll be informed if I was granted the visa (look at the verb!! Grant! It's humiliating on its very own! As If I am being granted a Noble prize) I checked the online page and this is what I got. I squeezed my guts and made a call and an Indian guy who kept saying "Mam" throughout the call told me that I might still have to wait for an extra week or two!

If it were not for Spain I would have dropped it, but for Spain I am capable of almost anything.

Follow Me: She Said Yes!

During this season of constant and endless weddings and engagement parties, the news of the "Follow Me" couple getting engaged has actually filled my heart with deep joy. 

I am personally depressed by how people around me deal with marriage as if it was the simplest of all matters. They jump into it with the least suspicions, with the least questions and with zero experience of one another. 

When I see such examples, It just restores my faith in marriage, because in those cases marriage is one station in a long path of mutual experiences and memories, it is not the "beginning" of the path, it is not the point where a wife and a husband "get to know each other".

 It is crazy, people are simply out of their minds, because if you were to establish a partnership with someone where a huge amount of money is in question, you will be investigating this partner for a while, just to make sure in which hands are you leaving your money, so why do people spend less time and effort investigating their "LIFE freaking partner". 

And here I am not speaking about love. I am not speaking about the simple thought of "if you are married to someone, then you lost all chances of ever falling in love without being a cheater" .... Ahhhh ... anyways, have a look at those beautiful memories they already shared before putting a tag on things 

Dear Blog: Once Again

Dear Blog,

It has been a long time since I last posted anything here. I was busy but not to the extent that I could not write a line, I believe it was more of an energy-loss loop that started and restarted each and everyday.

Much has happened lately, it may not be tangible in a physical sense, but a lot has changed and happened and I am in a happy place in my life, and it would have been perfect if I was somewhere near being an economist or a person who can actually have a reasonable figure in their ban account if compared to their income.

I might write about this in a separate post, or might just hide it as it has been a source of personal shame for quite a long time now, but all in all, confessing a problem is the first step towards solving it (or so I say to feel less burdened).

In those past months I got myself an office in one of the best buildings of old Amman, and I finally got my little corner of the world where I sit in total and deep solitude to read, write and translate, with the thin possibility of being only interrupted by some of Jordan's best journalists who work for 7iber.com (7iber.net now after they have been blocked for the second time, given the brilliant publications law we enjoy in our beloved developed country).

I found an amazing 6-books-novel (3600 pages) that brought back my faith in reading, after I have been reading books that I don't like nor enjoy just for the sake of sticking to one of my very few good habits, and I am climbing walls in order to be the one who translates the whole thing into Arabic (fingers crossed, because things are not promising at all in this anti-intellectual environment).

I have not been interpreting any conferences lately because there is not any during Ramadan, and I have not missed any part of it except for the momentous sense of glory when translated words stream from my mouth as if they were my very own discourse, besides that I have actually enjoyed the solitude in the office and translating files all alone.

Nafnf and I are evolving, right in the moment when I thought that there was not to learn, life stunned me with a pile of incidents that made me realize how little I know about being a team-player, and we are both getting there, and our unity -most of the time- is the thing that heals the vanity of all other things.

There are wars and massacres around us, as it had always been, but now, for the very first time it effected me, in the sense that I feel actual guilt for the mere idea of not being being under debris...It is becoming unbearable, and the obliviousness of the rest of the world is effecting my feeling towards my career.

 I am a Translator, it is my job to deliver messages between two languages, and in such times of conflict I feel obliged to translate articles, videos, tweets and photo captions for the "entire world" to know the truth of what is actually happening in say, Gaza, Syria or Iraq.

Yet, I started losing the motivation, and feeling that it all goes in vain, the world does not care, not about my translations but about the message they convey,,, we got used to death and injustice, and the other has lost interest.

It is not like I want to reach a final verdict about what the other feels or wants, but it is that things have reached a point where knowledge is worthless, because wither you know that a town is being slaughtered in Syria, or you don't, they are still being slaughtered anyway.

I will go read something now, but I promise you dear blog, that I will come around more often and document all phases of my life, the life of others and the bit that I can witness from the world.    

I Own The World

Can I ask for more? A room of my own - that is not attached to my family's house- a good book - a terribly good book- my notebook, my fountain pen, my music and the best sense of cultivated solitude. 

Thus Spoke Jerry Seinfeld ... Marriage

                                                                                                                                                                      To me the thing about marriage is, I can't believe how often it happens. I mean I like the idea of it, but I can't believe that many people are meetin' people that they want to see every single day, everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday. That should like happen three or four times... you know in the whole century. 





P.s: I posted this from home, while my entire extended family went out to celebrate someone's engagement. Seriously, why do I have to leave my dear room, dear books, dear blog and dear pajamas to go celebrate that someone I barely know is signing a lunatic contract for the the rest of their life? Why! 

Marshall And Lilly: One Healthy Couple

I was just watching Sunrise, one of the last episodes of the final season of How I Met Your Mother

(I should not go on an on about how sad it is for such a good show to end, this post is about something else).

There is this conversation between Marshall, Lilly's ghost, 2005 Lilly's Ghost and his Father's Ghost.
When the father tells him that you don't get to hurt her back because she once hurt you, this is not how it works in a marriage.

Those words stopped me.

I'd rather (at least at this point) not go through personal details, but ever since I stopped being a "loner" I found out that I lack a dozen of skills that makes a "shared" life possible.

I can't exactly describe my sentimental disabilities, but when you are in love (and more importantly in a relationship) you simply experience an expansion in your limits as a person (as a mere individual), suddenly there is someone else "within" your existence and in spite of how nice, romantic bla bla bla that is, but it is a responsibility if a very tricky kind, because you can no longer act like an individual (think alone, decide alone, be a bitch, be nice and supportive) and yet the "team work" is constant work!

It is a huge effort. NafNaf and I had a conversation once about this and I told him that he has to put an effort in the "relation work" and he said "I thought a relation is the place where you get to relax after you are exhausted from all the other work".

When I thought about what he said I realized one thing: We are soooo Young!
Really, it was not easy for me either to use a term like "work on a relation", that is not romantic, I have always thought it is a God-given thing, that it just happens, but with the experience I came to realize that a love relationship is like a sophisticated mansion, the bigger and the nicer it is, the more maintenance it requires.

Going back to Marshall and Lilly, they are one of the reasons why I am gonna miss How I Met Your Mother, simply because you don't get to see such healthy examples neither in real life nor in TV.

If those two have taught me a listen, it would be: Never Keep Score. :)
   

I Know Where I'm Going Now

Remember when I was wondering about the book that I am going to read next? 

Well I got an idea from Inkitab's twitter. They are going to discuss "Memoirs From The House Of The Dead" by Dostoevsky. 

I NEVER participated in a book club, not even when I had to back in the school days, I used to read the book and go to the discussion but I never opened my mouth. 

I can't recall why I didn't actually participate in school, but I clearly know now why I don't prefer participating in a book club, it is because I simply don't trust people's tastes and choices. 

Yeah, this is so cocky and arrogant, but what shall I do? Social Media taught me better than any teacher that people are mostly an aggregate of imitators who have no "judgement" of their own. And I believe that the setting of a "book club" enhances the collective mentality where people are going to look for the points of agreement rather than the points of disagreement. 

Of course I can't judge if I had never been in such clubs, but I know Jordan, I know Jordanians, I know believers and I know people who believe in "given facts" and their willingness to defend their "facts". 

Yet, I still want to give it a shot, what am I going to lose anyway? It's Dostoevsky, it is never bad to spend hours with him. I Love him, and If I ever find a way (metaphysically, scientifically or magically) to meet him, I'll have a long long conversation with him and we will talk like old friends, and -God Help Me- I will converse with him in his heart-melting language: Russian. 

Over and Out  

The Worst Interpretation Ever: Law Consecutively

Yesterday's interpretation was the worst by all means.

There is a proverb that I made up, it goes like this: "No interpretation is uncomfortable for ever". I know this for a fact. Each time I go to an interpretation job I feel a subtle anguish at the beginning, I feel a bit blinded by flashing lights of the new topic, but after a few minutes I just get used to it and some invisible wings grow on my shoulders and I soar in the beautiful sky of words.

I came to peace with those minutes of anguish at the beginning, I expect them and I wisely wait for them to pass me by. But yesterday, it was something else, because the anguish hung there around me throughout the entire day, and I could not sense the relaxation until I was doing my last two turns only.

In the morning I was left for 90 minutes on my own without the relief interpreter (a word that I learnt today! Relief: substitute, assistant, someone who relieves you when you are suffocating) and when I got to the room (a room not a hall or anything) and I found no interpretation booth I just wanted to flee the hotel and pretend like I never got the call: It was CONSECUTIVE!

I can't mention enough how much I hate consecutive interpretation, can I? No I can't.
Consecutive interpretation tests your ability to memorize what people just said, it has nothing to do on how fluent you are, or how good of an interpreter you are.

And the topic, Dear Lord of the Heavens!!

(I am not gonna go in details because I am not entitled to) But hear me out here, it was a project team from the European Union that had been working in Jordan for 4 years now, and their project ends this upcoming October, So they were working with "partners" from a Jordanian ministry so the project will be "sustainable" after the Eu team leaves.

Hahahaha, really, I came to find those meeting terribly funny, "Sustainable" who?!! If the project barely moved forward a couple of steps meanwhile the EU team was above the government's head all the time, how will anything move forward when they leave?!

Anyhow I learned some new words (the hard way of course, my Manager\Co-interpreter\Teacher whispered them to me in a small room where everyone could notice that I did not know them)

On probation: تحت المراقبة، تحت الاختبار
court of appeal: محكمة استئناف
court of cassation: محكمة التمييز
penal code: قانون العقوبات
feasibility study: دراسة جدوى
grand criminal court: محكمة الجنايات الكبرى
palace of justice: قصر العدل
Bar association: نقابة المحامين
liaison officer: ضابط ارتباط
pre trial detention: الاحتجاز قبل المحاكمة
administrative detention: التوقيف الإداري
execution of judgement: تنفيذ الحكم
defendant: المدعى عليه
radicalization of prisoners: تطرّف المساجين

I feel ashamed for not knowing those words, but what shall I say, late better than never.  

Where Do I go Now?

So I have been reading this book for 5 days now. I was startled by my own self, because I could see ever since the beginning that it was a 560 pages book, but still I said "what the heck, am gonna give it a shot" and it turned out to be an enjoyable book, and I was not booked for any interpretation jobs those last 3 days, so yesterday for example, I read 200 pages while sitting under a tree in the university.

Now I am 90 pages away from the end, and I felt that subtle reluctance, that goes like a siren inside my head: Now WHAT?!!

I have 901 files on my kindle, of course I have a LOT of choices, but still, each time I am about to finish a book or a TV series I feel like I am losing friends and that is never comfortable.

And in order to not send mixed signals, I don't like the book that I am reading, and I am gonna detail my thoughts in a separate post as soon as am done, but I just had to whine, sue me :)  

A Glimpse of My Phone

Yesterday, my brother brought back my phone from the store. I don't recall being as happy for a "thing" as I was happy then! I was jumping up and down, I felt I was reunited with an entire galaxy (does the name come from there?!) I did not even bother to put my sim card in it, I just went checking all the messages on my WhatsApp (now that I don't have Facebook, it was my only way to communicate with the outer world) and I went on checking the classes that I missed on Coursera, the articles that I did not get to listen to on Umano, and I did all of that while listening to Mozart on Calm Radio application. (I even lost track of my hormonal cycle, so I updated my information on My Days application).

I watched half an episode of Seinfeld and I slept all happy and glorious.

Today, as I came back from work (in Sahab) I moved the sim card, and I made a call to the office, and there was Mahmoud talking, I could hear him, but he could not hear me. I hung up, called someone else (wishing that it was mahmoud's phone's mistake) but No, the microphone was disconnected!

Abu Khreisat wanted to talk to me, I sent him a message and explained why I can't pick up, so he sent a message saying: Pick Up, I'll tell you what I want and then respond with a message. He wanted me to cover Jordan University's elections for Alghad Newspaper, I was excited but he could not hear my excitement.

I felt muted myself.

When I went home, I called my brother, and with all the world's disappointment, I told him that the microphone is disconnected and he came and sent it back to the store.

I know how childish all of this sounds, I know that there are bigger struggles in the world, but I am a freaking INTERPRETER I can't function without my Wikipedia search, Google search, UNterms, Almaany Dictionary even Google translator... I keep getting mini heart attacks when I am wandering down the street, I hear a word, I find out that I have no equivalent for it and I die a little inside as I can't check it right then right there.

Prayers for my cute phone.

Ps: The painting up there, is titled: Glimpse of the sea, Long Island, by Albert Julian Onderdonk.
Check the rest of the paintings here.

Your Face In The Rear Mirror

Each time we are in a taxi and you sit in the front seat and dwell in that road silence, I steal of glimpse of your face in the rear mirror.

 I gaze into your face features, I remember the time when you were a total stranger, and the times when you were "one of my friends", and I just skip a heart beat when I realize how you moved from That to being You. 

The face that I love the most, and the face that makes me feel alive and gives a sense of meaning to the rest of my life aspects. 

You are my favorite stranger, my best friend and the only thing that embodies my fear of the future. 

Long Story Short: Belief and Atheism

So, it is Elections time in Jordan University again. It is a season that I used to love, maybe I still do love it, but not after I realized that it is always transformed into a silly parade of beliefs.

A  student elections -in an ideal world- must have something to do with a students program, academic strategies, extra curriculum activities and delivering services for students. It should have nothing to do with how "religious" are you, how "God fearing" you are, or how atheist can you be.

It is just preposterous how students are designed in a way where the world is divided into two: wither they are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or they are filthy atheists. While for the other party, the world is divided into two: Cool liberal people, and religious scumbags who are not worthy of life.

I don't even want to go deeper into the topic, because each time I go in a conversation with either parties it stuns how little they know about each other, as if each one of them is living in a separate continent. They are both full of prejudgments, stereotypical ideas and it does not stop there, but it goes to moral defaming: Both want to prove that the other is immoral, hypocrite and thoroughly dirty, and for this they use a scandalous tune where they want to socially cross out the other.

I used to be a religious person -"by the book" kind of person- and then I started thinking about things, and I started modifying my way of life based on what I came to understand, rather than what I was "raised to be", and this puts me in the very uncomfortable shoes of religious friends opening up to me, cursing and criticizing an atheist -or someone simply not as religious as they are- thinking that I have the same views as them.

So this last Thursday one of those friends, asked me to explain to her "what does an atheist person believe in, and what makes them strong in this battle in life". I paused, for different reasons, first because I always sensed some kind of inferior treatment towards me from this specific person based on the fact that the "so sacred things" for them are not that sacred for me, Second because I felt lie there is plenty of other people who could answer the question, and there is no need for her to shield herself with me if she actually wanted to get the answer for her alleged question.

Most importantly, what disgusted me, was that the question was a result of a conversation this friend had with other girls in the faculty who present themselves as atheists, and their only argument was: we are not voting for Muslim Brotherhood candidates because they are going to draft a law the obliges girls to wear a uniform to university, and headscarf will be obligatory even for christian female students!

It is those shitheads who bring bad name for atheism, where an atheist is perceived as someone who is scared of wearing long sleeves.  

I know this is gonna sound cocky when I say it, but I am gonna say it anyway: I don't believe that it is acceptable for 20 years old people to go around saying: I am muslim and proud, or I am atheist and proud. Simply because they are toooo freaking young to have such an enormous question sorted out, and if I may add: it is even worse for the religious ones, because they are backed up by an entire culture, system, society that tells them that they are RIGHT, which makes it extremely hard for them to think one inch outside the box.

And to wrap this post up, and in spite of me not having to explain anything to anybody, but still I want to post this quotation from an Amin Maalouf book that simply describes what I believe in.

“لستُ من أتباع أي دين، ولا أشعر بالحاجة لأن أصبح كذلك

وموقفي من هذه المسألة غير مريح لا سيما وأنني لا أشعر بنفسي ملحدًا كذلك. لا أستطيع أن أؤمن بأن السماء فارغة، وبأنه لا يوجد بعد الموت سوى العدم. فماذا يوجد وراء ذلك؟ لا أدري. هل يوجد شيء ما؟ لا علم لي. أرجو ذلك، إنما لا أعرف؛ وأشعر بالريبة إزاء من يدعون المعرفة، سواء كانت أشكال يقينهم دينية أم ملحدة. 

إنني في منزلة بين الإيمان وعدم الإيمان مثلما أنا في منزلة بين وطنين، ألاطف هذا وألاطف ذاك، ولا أنتمي لأي منهما. لا أشعر بنفسي غير مؤمن إلا حين أستمع إلى عظة رجل دين؛ ففي كل عظة، وكل إشارة إلى كتاب مقدس، يتمرد عقلي، ويتشتت انتباهي، وتتمتم شفتاي لعنات. غير أني أرتعش في أعماقي حين أحضر مأتمًا علمانيًا، وتتملكني الرغبة بدندنة تراتيل سريانية، أو بيزنطية، أو حتى ترتيلة القربان المقدس القديمة التي يقال إنها من تأليف توما الأكويني. 

ذلك هو درب التيه الذي أسلكه في مجال الدين. وبالطبع، أسير فيه وحيدًا، بدون أن أتبع أحدًا، وبدون أن أدعو أحدًا لأن يتبعني 

التائهون - أمين معلوف