Posts Tagged thoughts
Four Random Scenes From My Life
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on September 22, 2014
There was nowhere the cat could go but under the sofa. This was tremendous progress in its character. The pool man’s pole was so high and creepy thin the cat was convinced it was going to get it. It had been lying down on its favorite chair when the giant pole began to rise and dip itself into the mysteries of the blue water. It was a lot of restraint for the cat not to rush inside and to wait it out under a nearby sofa. And that amazing feat of courage paid off. The pole monster didn’t go much farther; it soon retreated. And the cat, forty-five minutes later, began to relax again, and the fur on its arched back and tail began to lay back in place, reverting the cat to its original size.
The cat had intellect and it was using it. The balance between instinct and intellect in its little head got the upper hand. Danger subsided. All was alright.
********
She’d been dreaming of this all her life. Since the age of sixteen she decided that she wanted to learn Italian. Because she was not the one paying for the lessons, her father insisted that she learned Spanish instead, said he would only pay for Spanish, and Spanish it was. She enjoyed it nevertheless but it didn’t seem to satisfy the thirst for linguistic music inside her head. In her mind she could speak and understand every word. She could read it well. When she was old enough to pay for her own Italian classes she couldn’t keep them up. She allowed work and politics and “faithful sisters” to define her life’s purpose. Suddenly, rallying for bearded men who spoke shiny words became more important to her than speaking Italian. And she let the years go by.
Then one day she woke up from her slumber and decided it was time to get her life back. What was that language she so wanted to speak? She thought with a smile in her head. The moment finally came for her final stretch with it. She sat in front of the teacher, dumbfounded. Words were racing each other inside her head but none of them were the ones she wanted to use. Everything came up to her throat and choked in there while her teacher looked at her with a compassionate smile. The silence was murderous. But she would not let it kill her dream. She was listening to Italian, the teacher was promising her Italian, and all was alright.
********
She was in white, standing in a crowd of eager women from different parts of the world. There was a wall separating them from a destination they had traveled thousands of miles to reach. It was now only a few short steps away once the door opens through that wall. The talking and the chattering echoed in the vastness of the mosque. White marble pillars stood eternally around them, cloaked in gold carvings, perfumed with Oud – the time old Arabian incense. The coolness of the powerful air conditioners and the lingering scent of Oud elevated her. The crowd was suddenly a part of the divine experience. All those women, barred from his blessed presence by the misogynistic sheikhs that have come to take his place despite their false claims to be his humble followers. All those women, standing patiently, waiting for the male ego to subside so that they could be with him at last, and tell him how the men have broken their promise to him to treat them well.
Then all at once the door opened and the women flooded into the forbidden quarters of the grand mosque. Joy filled them as some of them began to ululate, allowing their instinct to challenge the sin-minded conservatism of the men around them. Tears began to stream down her face as she rushed towards the shrine of the prophet. She walked into the sunlit platform where she used to chase the pigeons when she was only seven as her mother sat quietly in a corner and prayed. Back then women were allowed this proximity to the prophet at all times. Back then the entire mosque was her playground. She kept walking, enjoying the sound of the pigeons’ fluttering wings, stepping once again into her childhood, until she finally reached him. She stood there with a smile on her face, and all was alright.
********
She stared longingly at the wedding cake. She had been to a wedding in that hotel before and she knew how well they made those cakes. Most people she knew were chocolate cravers, she never was. Chocolate always came in handy to her on difficult times, but she was never a chocolate seeker. To her, the whiter the cake the stronger the lure, and if frosting was included her mouth would fill with saliva no matter what important event she was in. The wedding was coming to an end and she was worried they might forget to cut up the cake for the guests. Soon everyone began to leave and her heart began to sink when suddenly, her aunt came to her with a piece of the cake. She grinned and held it like an archaeologist would hold an ancient treasure. She took the first bite and peace drifted into her veins. And the world disappeared. And all was alright.
Inhale and Hold On, Exhale and Let Go
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on May 12, 2014
A fragment of my kitchen, or my mind
Wow! I just walked out of my kitchen with some very scary realizations about myself. I’ve had this strong desire to hold time standing still for so long I’m starting to see what my life really looks like inside my head. I’m in one of those gloomy, sorry weeks and I haven’t been clearing anything I use in the kitchen. Coffee mug used? Right where I left it. Next day other coffee mug used? Still there. Tray out? Right where I left it with its corner sticking out the edge of the table. Spoon used? Yes, right next to her sisters in the sink. Day after day with mug after mug and spoon after spoon, and before I’m aware of it I have a disgusting kitchen with piles of ridiculously dismissed items that hadn’t really needed more than a quick rinse to begin with. Now if I try to look for a clean spoon I wouldn’t find one. All would be used.
That is precisely what I do with the life I have outside my kitchen. I hold on to everything, good or bad. Each bad experience, no matter how small or big, comes in, carves something in my gut and sits right there, and I do nothing to clear it. I leave those experiences intact instead of picking them up and working out where they need to be stacked so they could be more useful and less painful. Needless to say, I dig into my brain for one creative thought and can’t find any; all are too busy twirling around old experiences, keeping them alive and simmering.
My kitchen is the perfect visual representation of my mind. And I can’t count the number of times I was advised by close people to let go. Somehow I find this to be the single most challenging uphill task I have to take. Everything around me seems to be screaming at me to get over myself. I see it in that bored look my cat gives me whenever I start to space out and stare emptily at the TV, in the janitor’s snicker when I fuss over the lit cigarettes in front of the elevator, and now it’s crept into my dreams.
Yep, my dreams. Now as I write this the dream I had last night is actually falling into place. I dreamed that my sister and I were waiting for our mother to show up in some mall and she didn’t. I got worried about her but my sister didn’t seem to be as concerned as I was. I checked with my aunt and she didn’t seem concerned either. I was so frustrated that no one was worried, but when I checked with a friend of mine and she seemed to conceal something, I kept pressing her until she walked into a room and came out with my mother. I rushed to her and hugged her, but she didn’t hug me back. Her body was cold, but it wasn’t the kind of cold that works its way through the skin from the weather while the core is still warm; it was that inner, lifeless cold that crept its way out through the skin and to the hand that’s touching it.
My mother was forever gone, and no amount of persistence brought her back to me. I was the only one holding on to something that was no longer there, unlike my sister and my aunt, who had accepted the fact that she was gone and simply let go–or so it seemed in my dream. Holding on to the memory of my mother’s presence in my life has been like taking a deep, satisfying breath of fresh, salty sea air. But because it’s just a memory, the air soon becomes a burden and nothing can relieve me except a powerful exhale. That’s what letting go is like; it’s like a much needed relief of a burden ripping at your chest, and I’ve been living my life with just an inhale.
But seriously now, I’m not sure what this is, to be honest. So before I conclude this particularly pointless post I’m going to go ahead and blame it on Cairo, as I always do with everything that annoys me. So maybe it’s a Cairo thing? Because I look around me at Cairo’s streets and whoa! That is one big grimy, slimy old kitchen that hasn’t been cleared up since the Mamluks. Cairo has layer after layer of history, and on a less romantic note, layer after layer of garbage and abandoned junk either crowding backyards of buildings or creeping into their service stairs, making them nice little hubs for rodents and reptiles. Many people have grown so accustomed to the mess around here that they no longer take notice of it. They’re aware of it, but they just accept it as the sorry reality that is their home city. It creeps into their subconscious and puts them in a bad mood each time they hit the streets, which could explain the road rage and the street fights and the honks. So yeah, Cairo has crept into my subconscious and given me this messy kitchen. And yes of course you’re reading this messy post, because how can I be creative with a mind as overloaded and messy as that kitchen, or as Cairo?
Oh Those Leaping Frogs!
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on April 21, 2014
“When I’m idle, my mind tends to stray and to turn little worries into issues of international importance.”
That’s what my best friend wrote yesterday on her blog. She has taken her bike and started a solo two month journey across Europe and I think about her everyday. She now has a problem with her bike and can’t find anyone to fix it until she’s on the road again, so she realized that she has no choice but to take a chance and hope for the best, hope that the bike will hold until she’s reached her destination or managed somehow to find a place that can help her with it. That is no easy exercise for her but, like I said, she has no other choice.
It’s the need to get going and continue, that constant dynamic movement that pushes us forward, whether literal towards a certain destination or metaphorical towards a dream in our lives, that makes it hard to think of too many options. It narrows everything down to the need to keep going with the hope that things will figure themselves out later. That’s what focusing is all about. It forces us to take the first choice we have, and we realize that if we don’t take it, we’d be forever caught in an abyss of blurry possibilities that don’t really have all the answers. Like she said in her blogpost, it’s the idleness that turns little thoughts and concerns into larger issues.
That is precisely my problem. Except that they don’t only turn into “issues of international importance,” they turn into melodramatic, scifi, crime and horror scenarios and they drive away my sleep.
I’ve always had this problem, but recently it’s been so powerful it’s turned into full anxiety fits that led me to finally admit that I have a condition. Once a thought or fear hits me it doesn’t matter how many people I’m with or how much fun I’m having. I lose the ability to interact and I’m suddenly surrounded by an invisible dome of doom that lands on top of me with a loud thump, encapsulating me in its walls. I stop hearing anything outside my head. I don’t even see anything I’m looking at.
I’ve had this condition for over a year now, and I’ve had it over the most trivial things and the not so trivial things. Generally it has taught me that no amount of thinking, anticipating, or fearing anything can solve potential trouble, because things – either problems or their solutions – can come to you from the least expected direction. Systematic planning beforehand and doing things the right way should suffice, because really, none of the little frogs that leap around in my brain are in any way legitimate concerns that can actually shield me from problems if I were to pay attention to them. I need to teach myself to just do what I gotta do and move on, just like my friend did this morning. She’s on the road right now as I write this and I really pray things turn out OK for her. I know they will, because she decided to handle this the right way.
The amusing part is what happens in the long run after you’ve been subjecting yourself to these frogs for long. I feel that the universe begins to mock me, because there’s no better way of reminding me that I have no control over everything except with humor. Here’s an example: Recently I decided to go on a trip near the red sea and take my cat. I’m staying in a nice place with a little garden and I know that my cat loves the outdoors. I always obsess whenever he’s not confined within the safety of his home that something might strike him; a snake, a dog, another cat, a car. Yet I let him out into the open anyway because I know how much he loves it and he was so happy, sniffing one tree and rubbing himself in the sand under another. Then guess where the danger comes from? The sky. Two crows decided to hover above him like they just found a feast. So I grabbed him as fast as I could and went inside.
Crows.
I’ve been worried too much from things on the ground I didn’t see danger coming from the sky. I found myself spending a good part of my trip – both me and my niece – researching and discussing the mysterious life of crows, how intelligent they are and why they would wanna take a bash at a poor cat that only wants to rub itself in sand and chase flies. The conversation for a good part of the trip has, of course, been mostly about crows. I definitely never thought crows would grab my attention at any point in my life, let alone take my horrified imagination to terrifying scenes of two crows grabbing my kitty by the collar and flying away with him while I scream and run hysterically after them to no avail when suddenly, to my ultimate terror, they drop him to the lagoon when they realize he’s too heavy and my voice chokes while I swim and swim and fail to save him. My mind started racing with thoughts on what to do. Take away his collar is something I actually considered.
Apart from that, there’s also the mush my brain becomes from all the over leaping the frogs do. Here’s another embarrassing example: Because my cat is old, I find myself watching him very closely for any signs of health problems. Two days ago while I was clearing his litter I reassured myself that his feces is a beautiful shade of brown. “Beautiful.” I actually said that my cat’s poop is a “beautiful” brown. Oh the things I catch myself saying in my head! And by the way I’m clearly not a doctor, so I have no way of knowing what shade of brown exactly should a cat’s poop be for me to call it beautiful (not that a sane doctor would say “beautiful as opposed to, say, “healthy”?) I have no knowledge and no means to apply that knowledge. I just have little frogs that leap around in my head.
And yes of course, I have been idle. I haven’t been working for the past four years and I’ve been spending too much time on my own. It’s no surprise that I turn into this.
I walked out of the bathroom thinking, wow how would a normal person react? I’d say the first thing they’d say is thank God she has no children. There’s a reason for everything and this definitely is it. I couldn’t possibly bring up a human into this world if I were to go in after they’re done with their business and check out the color of their stuff in the toilet.
So I clearly need to snap out of this. I need to be a normal person again that assigns just the right amount of concern or emotion to each problem. Actually I need to be a person that knows how to identify an actual problem as opposed to a minute earth vibration caused by a frog’s happy landing after a not so welcome leap.
The Art of Showing Up
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on April 14, 2014
I have nothing to write. I’ve been rolling ideas around in my head and my thoughts are just fragmented and kind of shy. They skitter away the minute I pay attention and try to figure out where they might take me. They don’t seem to want to take me anywhere. Just teasers.
I sat for an hour and a half with my coach yesterday spilling lots of things at her I don’t think she expected for the session, and I love how somehow she managed to get all the weird little parts together and set me a very challenging assignment. She said, everyday you pick one victim and spill one quirky thing about yourself to them. That way, she said, you can shut your saboteur up and kill that ego that’s been standing in your way for so long. I accepted the challenge and started wondering who that could be, and surprisingly some opportunities did present themselves. I got an unexpected phone call from an old friend in Qatar, but the conversation was way too sober for me to suddenly do that. Or maybe once again, my ego took over like it always does.
I could actually finish the entire assignment of the week in this one blog post and spill it out to the world at once, but it wouldn’t be too well constructed. I’d be taking you from bad energy and evil spirits to mysterious scents and a little unseen lump in my knee that I think is bone cancer. Why would you wanna go there? Or why would I take you there and risk my image as a sane, composed person?
Before that session began I thought to myself I had nothing to say to her. I wasn’t doing anything in the direction she was taking me. It was a very distracted week. But I decided that I was going to show up anyway and say whatever the hell comes to my mind. Just as I’m doing now.
We get so many moments in our lives where motivation goes down to a little below zero. You stop and start wondering what the point is. You’ve been doing this for so long over and over and nothing ever happens. But I realized that things don’t happen suddenly, they tiptoe in one tiny step at a time you have to step back and see the larger picture to realize they’re here. They also don’t happen because of how well we do things or whether or not we’re able to perfect our performance. They happen because of our persistence. On some workouts I move with the speed of pregnant turtle. My body feels so heavy, so goddamn heavy I look and feel clumsy and I get driven to tears in the middle of the workout but I don’t stop. OK sometimes I do, but it becomes a very dark day so I try to avoid that. I just realized that I have to start letting go of my obsessive desire to do things right, or even ever reaching my goal. I lower my expectations and I persist. Doing things out of habit always makes me feel grateful that I showed up, because I feel better at the end of the session of whatever it was I was supposed to be doing.
So here I am challenging my ego and the evil annoying editor looking behind my shoulder and snickering as I write this. I don’t even know why I called this an “art.” Actually I do, I couldn’t think of any other word. Maybe it is an art although now it just hit me. It’s more of a struggle, really. The Struggle of Showing Up? Nah. “Art” is prettier.
Rwanda Slaps Me in the Face and Grins
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on April 7, 2014
Two nights ago I watched a video posted by a friend on Facebook of three little Arab girls with solemn faces, cloaked in black, sitting stiffly on a couch and singing about the length of a girl’s skirt as protection from the eyes of young men, her careful, slow walk as the best cover of her body, and her hijab as the “ideal” crown on her head. The three young expressionless faces chanted on how happy that girl was that she’d covered her ‘awrah, her nakedness, her intimate parts, her whatever you may call it. There’s no actual word for it in English.
The following morning I woke up with bloated fingers, puffy eyes and half a brain (from pizza, not the video), browsed with one hand and held my coffee in the other when suddenly National Geographic informed me that, twenty years on after the genocide, women in Rwanda now have majority seats in the parliament, and that in fact by achieving that in 2008 Rwanda was the first country ever.
Now the expressionless face was mine.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy and inspired that Rwanda is quickly getting up on its feet and seems to most definitely be on the right track. It’s just that the dichotomy hit me a bit hard since I clearly hadn’t had enough time to recover from that traumatic video of the night before.
This is not a post typically making unfounded comparisons or misinformed bla bla bla. It’s also not an attack on Islamic dress code as I don’t see the Islam that I know anywhere in that abusive video (and it would take a lot more space than this post for me to explain why). This is just a passing rant of a person once described by a close friend that she’d chosen to stay aboard a sinking ship.
I don’t know much about Rwanda, this article could be showing a very narrow side of things. It could be, of course, but it’s there and it can’t be based on nothing. There’s an Egyptian proverb that says “There’s no smoke without fire,” so surely this article must be based on something? How about the fact that women hold a majority of seats in the parliament?
According to National Geographic, that percentage of women is very small given that the majority live in rural areas with limited or no education. But that small percentage made it to the parliament, dammit! So those people have got to be doing something right.
And that’s Rwanda. You know what Rwanda was to a lot of Egyptians especially during the horrible days of the genocide? As much as there was widespread sympathy over what they were going through there was also racist jokes over the contamination of the Nile because of the dumping of the bodies in thousands. You see, we’re known among the Arab world to joke our troubles away and we’re known to be the most hilarious nation with unbeatable jokes, but that multitude of jokes also has an excess of ill-tasted, sometimes sick, punchlines that come out more as insults than innocent entertainment.
‘Cause that’s what we do. We slouch around in our own filth and love ourselves so much we think no nation can ever be greater and point fingers at other countries’ mishaps.
Rwanda is a proud example that a weak, recovering state does not have to be inefficient if it is smart. Because of its inability to penetrate it has empowered the local communities. Rwanda has something called “community-policing committees” which is a group of people empowered to help maintain law and order in their respective communities. Those people are actually trained by the police to prevent crimes and protect women and children from violence.
Our state is neither weak nor recovering. I’m going to forget about all the big words and just put it in couch and popcorn language. Our state has the force of a hurricane and it doesn’t hesitate to use it when angered. It’s also lazy, old, quite grumpy, and stupid. So in the early days of the January 25th uprising it acted “wounded” and “upset” and disappeared off the streets after driving over people and shooting a bunch of others in the chest and the head. It left us to fend for ourselves, so the closest we got to those police committees was of our own efforts. Residents of all neighborhoods created their own guarding units and took shifts protecting streets and property and even directing traffic.
As for the women, our notorious streets harassment record actually skyrocketed, so another version of these committees was created and continues to operate, a purely grassroots initiative to spot and prevent street harassment of women, either by helping the victim file a case against the aggressors or just shooing the fellows out of the way after giving them a good tongue lashing. Our problem, however, is that once these committees have caught the transgressors there’s a very fragile system to take them to in order to effectuate already existing anti-harassment laws. The overriding culture that it is essentially the woman’s fault clouds many of the officers’ judgment, and the woman often finds herself presented with narrow options and threatened to tarnish her own reputation if she wishes to proceed with the case. So our individual efforts to create a sense of security, accountability, and just simply some sanity in the public space go almost completely unsupported by the state.
And just like the rest of the Arab world, the misogynistic, hormone injected view of women continues to thrive and even gets passed on to generations as I have seen in the video, ruining every woman’s sense of self-worth as a human being before it even begins.
What is it about Rwanda that makes it so on the right track compared to Egypt? The country was reduced to ashes and yet somehow, miraculously, most of those in charge seem to be doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Or does it take a climactic, post-apocalyptic form of destruction like the one Rwanda witnessed for people to come back to their senses and start doing the right thing instead of wasting precious time loving themselves and hating each other? What is that force that keeps dragging us into this dung filled pit? What’s our secret, really?
Leaving
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Travels on March 31, 2014
Each time I travel I keep thinking of the distance from the place and the people I leave. I actually watch it happen from the minute I walk out the door to the moment I reach the clouds and go above them to wherever lies ahead. I sit in the plane, I look at the flight monitor and I think of the actual physical miles that start adding up by the minute. And upon my arrival it blows my mind how many oceans and continents have now come to divide us. I silently thank God that I live in an age where my loved ones are just a click away. I can always talk to them and see them on my little gadgets. I don’t have to write a letter and wait for three weeks or more to get a response. When my brother went to study in America in 1977 I was a four year old and I don’t remember much, but the sight of my mother’s tears pouring down her face all through the flight back to Cairo stayed with me until today. She helplessly waited for his letters and couldn’t call him except through a switchboard and a very, very poor connection they’d both be yelling to the receivers to hear each other across continents.
Now I’m about her age at that time and I don’t have to go through any of that hassle. It’s ironic how these gadgets have come to work in my life. At times they’re the cloak I hide behind and talk to everyone through when I’m depressed, a cloak that soon turns into thick, brass walls that trap me inside and echo my own thoughts and obsessions and so add to my misery. Yet at other times they’re simply the only window to the faraway world I think about while I’m away.
And it’s funny how the people in my life are constantly shifting from the flesh and blood real to the voice and text virtual. I’ve spent all of my life with my heart cut in half between the here and there. The accessible near and the dreamy far–a far that is often entangled in longing, worry, and much, much anxiety. I have very close friends that live in two different continents, none of them my own, and I have a whole half of my family, with cousins I grew up with, living in a fourth continent. Heck I’ve even fallen in love across continents! That never lasted, of course.
With all of these people, sometimes we would meet and talk about everything on these little gadgets and it feels good to think we’re close. But we know we never actually are. Nothing compares to the physical nearness of a person you care about.
And just as we happen to be scattered all over the world, some of us end up in countries with much turmoil, tearing at the hearts of those faraway from them. Phone calls after phone calls run back and forth to reassure each other that we’re OK, until we finally get together and try to will time to stand still and hold the moment for as long as it can, but it can only hold it for as long as a human can hold a breath. Eventually it lets go–as it probably must. But then I try to hold on to the moment in my head for as long as I can too but it brings no comfort to me to think of a moment I’m not living anymore. Eventually I let go and I find that it’s actually a relief. Each time I say goodbye to a close one as they leave – or as I leave – knowing that our paths would cross again gives a temporary soothing numbness that takes me on to the next moment, and the next, and the next.
The uncertainty and the disenchantment of living in Egypt right now does not make separation easy, whether I was the one leaving or the one left behind. Egypt, where I stayed and continue to stay, used to be the hub for everyone I knew. Everyone used to come back and stay and they would be willing the moment to stand still, wishing with all their might to come back. My mind races with thoughts on my future and the future of my family. Is this going to pass soon or will we all be strangled in a limbo? We’re living our everyday quite normally but there’s an overarching feeling of depression residing in the air. The economy is down and there’s little or no tourists walking around (it’s actually strange how the sight of tourists in Cairo’s streets was so characteristic it feels almost unrecognizable without them now). I can’t stop asking when will this nation pick itself up again and I know the answer is not soon, because right now it’s still busy dismantling itself into scattered pieces and there are some who are actually trying to turn the pieces into lots of even smaller ones.
But it doesn’t do any good for me to think too much. I’m just a dot in history. I’m neither judge nor God to know fate; I’m only a passing witness so small and tiny for the universe to see with the naked eye. So much has happened over the seven thousand year old history of my home country that I can never know what is going to happen. But I know that it all comes in cycles and that it will pick itself up again, though probably not in my lifetime.
I think that what I’m trying to say is that as seemingly exciting and rich a traveler’s life can be, with friends and loved ones in every continent, when the ground they once stood so solidly on – that anchor point they always came back to – suddenly begins to shake, all they can think about is how much they long for bringing everyone they love together and staying put with them in one reliably solid, safe place where no one can ever get hurt and no one ever has to say goodbye. I’d give up all my traveling and all my flying around for just this and the peace of mind that comes with it. That’s just the way I feel.
Election Day, Revolution Blues, and a Bitter Coffee
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on June 16, 2012
I never thought the day would come when a year and a half after the revolution people would be rushing to the polls to elect a new president while I sit home and sip my coffee. I have to say that coffee never tasted so bitter.
On May 23 I went down and I voted for president. I was skeptical of those who chose the boycott. Yes the system was imperfect, but here was a chance and we had to grab it. I was full of hope and overwhelmed with memories of everything that we went through trying to bring down a 30 year old corrupt regime–only to discover less than a month after the president stepped down that the fight was in fact against a 60 year old military rule.
I still had hope because I believed in the man I was voting for. I had asked his representatives direct questions on how he proposed to rid the country of the military handcuffs and they had clear, concise, answers.
Today the second round of elections brings before us a military man with a history of corruption vs a Muslim Brotherhood man. Logic dictates to anyone who cares about the revolution that the man to vote for should be the second. Everyone knew that it was a tough but necessary choice. Some Egyptians abroad took pictures of themselves in front of the voting stations squeezing a lemon on their heads. It’s an Egyptian saying that if you have to gulp someone you can’t really take you squeeze a lemon on yourself and take them anyway.
Facts which further proved that the military was not up to a clean election were unraveling before us everyday. Lawyers’ appeals to enact a law drafted by parliament to ban old regime figures from participating in the election fell on the deaf ears of the constitutional court. And to top it, two days ago the military swept the institutions of the country clean. The parliament was dissolved, the military police were granted free action in the streets with civilians – and with the help of the judiciary – and the committee to draft the constitution was from now on going to be appointed by the military. In other words, the military was no longer ashamed to show us who’s the real boss of us. They’re coming out straight in the open and telling us, in our faces, that we don’t exist.
Uproar from most of the country’s activists and intellectual demanded from the brotherhood to withdraw officially in protest and to surround the parliament building with all of its members and to protest the blatant attack on legitimacy in the country. It became clear to everyone that we’re heading up against a dead end with a huge wall the size of the mountains of Moria! But do the brotherhood stand up to the magnitude of the catastrophe? Do they grab what may be their last chance of creating a united front and winning millions of people on their side? Oh no. They choose to walk on to the wall, dragging the whole country behind them, announcing that their way is the only way. Their way is the revolution. That will do nothing short of further stapling their role in Egypt’s history since the fall of Mubarak as pure pigheadedness. One that is actually stapling us all up that frightful wall.
And once again, the emotional blackmail resumes as if nothing happened. “Abstention from voting is a vote to the military man.” “Abstention from voting is surrender.” “Vote for the revolution.” And my favorite “Save the revolution!”
In the parliamentary elections that talk scared me. When the second round was between a brotherhood member and a salafi member, I rushed to vote for the brotherhood. I had to save the revolution. I had to save my country. I helped put up a man that was part of a majority in a parliament that let us all down, and not necessarily by choice, but by the mere fact that it was a powerless parliament under the military junta. And now the junta have flexed their muscles and roared and swept it away altogether.
And I’m now expected to believe that the next president will actually have powers.
We have no constitution, we are clueless as to what the president will be able to do, and we have no answers from the “revolution’s candidate” on what he plans to do in this mess. None of those that will vote for him have any answers. But somehow magically we believe that by moving on with the rest of the herd the military is shooing to the ballots we are saving our revolution.
Sorry. I’m not taking part in this farce. Egypt deserves a lot more than this. And the reason I’m not going to the ballots for a second time is not because neither candidate represents me, but because both candidates will end up subservient to the real boss in this country. A boss that has actually come out in the open after working for so many years in the dark. A boss that has actually used our blood to reign openly, unashamed, taking us back to the dark ages of intelligence police, detention, imprisonment, suspicion.
Sorry. It’s a lot bigger and messier than casting a vote in a ballot. The revolution is much bigger than a puppet helpless candidate that has shown little stamina in the face of catastrophes.
In fact, by now I realize that none of the chosen few politicians who claim to represent the revolution have shown any stamina in the face of catastrophes.
The revolution will never die no matter what the military does and no matter who the president becomes, because it was instilled in the hearts and minds of the youth. And the youth are the future collective mind of this country.
I’m proud to have woken up in time. I’m proud of the revolution. I’m proud of my clean finger. But I’m still not enjoying my coffee.
I Voted for President. It Made Me Remember
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on May 23, 2012
No sleep. I toss and turn. I send out a tweet. A buddy in Australia sends me back another tweet. “Get some sleep for at least a couple of hours,” but he knows I probably can’t even if I tried to. This was not supposed to be like this. I was relaxed all along the presidential campaigns. I knew that they would be far from perfect under the rule of the military junta, but I also knew that there was no way out of them if we were to come out of the impasse we’re in.
We’ve gone down the street, we’ve protested, shouted, struggled to get our voices heard, now all that is left for us is to make this vote. We earned it.
I get up in the morning and pour some coffee. Watch the news. Can’t stand the dumb commentary. I need to get ready for a long day, I think to myself. I look at the faces of the people standing in lines on TV. Everyone seems determined and confident. Those are faces of people that will not be fooled.
Ok that’s it. Can’t wait much longer. I get a bottle of cold water and pull on my jeans and off I go.
Streets are all so empty (and by empty here I mean smooth traffic). I take a taxi and I stare out the window but I don’t see much. I’m not in an emotional mood (yet). Suddenly a song I’ve known and loved since childhood starts playing in the radio. “Helwa ya Baladi.” My country, you are beautiful. And bam! Like someone suddenly put on a clip inside my head, completely out of my own will, with scenes from the revolution days.
I remember meeting with my two friends, Nadia and Adel (the latter is the one who tried to tweet me to sleep from Australia) all tense and pretending to have sandwiches under the penetrating eyes of the suspicious state security officers, waiting for the march to join it.
I remember the rising numbers of people in the marches that were everywhere I looked. “The people demand the fall of the regime” roaring everywhere and making my heart beat faster.
I remember the teargas. The suffocating moments where I thought I was going to die. The faces of the three men who came to my rescue and tried to give me water and onions to get rid of the effect.
I remember the sound of the rubber bullets. I remember the injured protesters fighting for their lives in the hospital.
I remember the ruling party’s building on fire. I remember maneuvering to cross the street to reach that tree without getting shot.
I remember the horses and the camels that came rushing into Tahrir trying to whip the protesters out of the square.
I remember the two men in Tahrir who tried to comfort me when I broke down and cried, telling me that it would all be alright. That they were not going to retreat.
I remember the night horrors. The live bullets down in our streets. The men in my family joining their neighbors taking night shifts in the street to protect homes and property.
I remember the minute we heard that Mubarak stepped down. The euphoria, the dancing in the street.
I remember the viciousness of the army in the months that followed. The continued killings and beatings.
I remember the beautiful smiling faces of the people who died.
I start weeping like an pregnant hormonal lady and throw the poor cab driver into a state of bewilderment. I ask for his tissues and blow away until we arrive at the polling station.
I can’t find any lines, I enter the school and find an average line inside, but it wasn’t mine. I didn’t have to stand in any lines. Low voter turn out? I think to myself. I go inside with my red nose and face all puffy. Didn’t get a chance to recuperate from that emotional drive. I take the voting sheet and mark my candidate. I leave.
There are no sirens and there is no music to highlight the drama of the historical moment. A moment that I, at 39, never ever thought I would see. Ever.
I know it would be simplistic of me to think that with these elections we have entered our aspired new era. Far from it. But maybe we’ve taken our first baby step in the middle of a field of land mines and ambushes. Not all the candidates are fresh blood. Some are old faces that have worked closely with the old regime. I don’t trust them. There are things they have done that have helped put Egypt in the sorry state it is in not only domestically, but regionally. Turned it into a shrunken mutilated version of a country that once was. If they win, the very democracy that helped put them there might be jeopardized. And we don’t yet have the system that can protect us from them.
We need a president that will help us build that system. That solid rock hard system that will assure that a corrupt president will be put on trial. If we have that system I don’t care who nominates themselves in the next round.
Thoughts, thoughts rumbling around in my head, beating each other for my attention.
No, we’re not there yet. But we have nothing but our vote so we cast it, hoping that we’ve made the right choice. Now all I can do is pray that the right person for the right moment would win, WHOEVER that person may be.
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