more dangerous than love

I realized there is something more dangerous than love and that is getting used to something, or addiction.

Shift

There must be a reason why you are here now.

Every day is not a waste do not treat it like one.

We act like it is mundane maybe that is because we are afraid of the magnificent.

We fear the beauty that might be today because for that to happen we might not be sane.

We find our selves sucked to the suffering path, suffering is part of life but many times we can shift our awareness and embrace the reason we are here and like the flower blossom, that is when people see us differently.

There will always be this one thing we want that aches us in the back of our heads and as we smile it will always remind us of our lack. When we get it there will be something else, nothing will make us happy except us inside deeper than the wants, many times that is easier said than done but when it is done it feels like heaven on earth.

The people on this earth are here for a reason even if they do not see it, shift to the true self dismiss the fake in you, around you, dismiss the ego that will always make you cry.

In the mirror you will find the divine once you drop your ego.

Love

Mennah

The Train

the train crashed and people died.

once again corruption never fails to scream help in its diverse ways.

what more do they need up there to see malfunction?

the boats sunk before, the trains crashed before and people get fired up every time, they let our flaming fires rise and the media is expressive and in no time something else happens that distracts and again it is forgotten. the prices of the dead are decided and some cash goes to the grieving families, and that is it.

Some passionate Amr Adeeb talk that settles some anger, some radical red articles in Masr El Yom, and that is it.

The powerful stay so powerful and suck the blood of the skinny dying men of Egypt who ride the trains before planning their bucket list, not knowing that it was a death wish not a just a ride.

the amazing thing is that every time they get a powerful figure in an interview their reaction to all the rightful accusation is "the people of Egypt are by nature naggers" it is not nagging when no rights of basic survival are offered like health safety and nutrition and transportation.

The masses of the overpopulated country of Egypt are dying in the corner and the people in the big seats think that compared to millions if we loose twenty it is no biggie!!

Does our over population give right to the death traps every where? is it an attempt to decrease our rising population?

The price of the Egyptian dead man is low and his family get some cash in an envelop. How does the man responsible for all the dying victims of corruption and stupidity, sleep at night. The people trust the men in power and the men in power think they are there to enjoy a luxurious ride not to serve the people. They think the people are their slaves and they exist to be trapped in traffic so their car passes, or better yet to die on the train, the train that in many places is the safest way, is in our country a death ticket.

Who cares about the Egyptian dead man on the train, no one, because he is not V.I.P and he has no high profile family to go to court and hire good lawyers. He has no one, he is dead like an ant that they stepped on and they have no guilt they will party at night. Only his creator can help him now.

We once built pyramids. Now all we care about is private business and the simple train is too complex to manage, too dangerous to ride, too trivial to attend to.

May those who we lost on the train rest in peace, who knows maybe they are the lucky ones, they do not have to suffer on this land anymore.

Finally

I finally paint again therefore I have less to say down here.

I confess I was depressed and finally I can breathe again, painting is my medicine and yoga is my drug.

The veil!!

Why do some people hate it so much?

I think it is a freedom of clothes!

Nobody attacks the nun!

Nobody attacks the Jewish man with the Jewish little hat on his head.

Nobody attacks the Indian dress covering the head.

Why is over body exposure allowed and body cover so scary now?

Natural said the devils advocate " however our instinct is to cover up"

Our worst nightmare is to be naked in public

If you are so open minded be open minded enough to accept the different the covered up.

Is it the media? that glorified the western woman?

I am not veiled it is not something I can do, because it is just not me.

However I respect the freedom to cover up just like I respect the freedom to reveal.

When I was in Sharm I was sitting and a man next to me took off his swimming suite now thank God I was warned to look away, now why is he so free to show what no one registered for seeing, and my poor veiled friend is discriminated against here in Cairo.

They treat the veiled better in the states. They treat her like a ghost here, like all we are here is our bodies. I can not help it but think the man who hates the veil so much wants to see what is under it. What if a woman believes in it? What if she wants to be treated like a human being not an object?

Being open minded means accepting the different. I personally think the heart is the most important part of the person, but if someone thinks they need to cover let them. live and let live. Stop being against what is now fact, they are there, they are everywhere, they chose it, it is not iran, mind your own business, will you live all your life upset that people are choosing a certain dress code that makes them comfortable?

I am not my Body! Look through me not at me!! Stop looking at women like they are their bodies!!!

The Airport

The new airport is new and beautiful and a source of my Egyptian pride.

All the money and artistic taste that got into it, wow!

unfortunately money can not buy new brains. The airport is beautiful and clean but the people running it are still stupid, rude, and in adequate.

It is not their fault, it is their education, it is their lack of oxygen, their lack of everything a human needs to be human that makes them act like animals.

I am not being harsh. Proof:

Our plane was late for four hours and they did not bother to announce it. Just left us there like pairs of shoes.

When our plane finally came, still nobody announced that it did, it was spread by word of mouth, we followed the herd into the bus and I asked the police man : is this a secret flight?

he said why I told him because no body mentioned or announced anything about it.

Congratulations on the new airport but we need a new people.

When You Go Away!

Concepts and analogies keep rising in my head.

If I can not see you

If I can not touch you

If I can not be with you

than how come you are alive to me?

Traveling is a small death.

To those left behind you become a concept, a ghost that refuses to stop communicating.

The Egyptians have said it, the far from the eye is far from the heart, but no I refuse to believe in that, so many loved ones have travelled and they live in my heart and they never part.

When I picked my sister up from the airport, she who lives abroad. I could not believe how much we have adapted to being apart. Life can be so funny like that, we used to be inseparable and on her wedding I cried a river, now we live for months apart the only thing that ties us is the phone. God, have I mentioned how thankful I am for the blessing of the telephone, I have no clue how it magically works, but I am so grateful for the telephone. Yes I love my phone and the miracles it does for me. The sound of my niece a continent away becomes as close as my cheek to me.

Now when I finally saw her and saw the masses in the gorgeous new Egyptian airport that I am so proud of, the masses who await for their returning loved ones too, I wait among them. She comes after an hour of anticipating her return and the trotting niece that I adore follows her lead, I look at them and suddenly it becomes surreal.

How come for such a long time we do not see them? Where do they go? I have seen Dubai but how is it possible that there is no trace of them here when they go?

They disappear and they appear and we see episodes of them here and then they leave and we cry and then we adapt again until they say they will come again and that is when we crave them most. The last few days before they come are the hardest since all the feelings we buried for them deep inside us, so we can function, arise and like the smell of coffee they fill us so obviously and make us lose our self in memories of them here.

They leave, they come and we try to be numb, who can live in continuos tears? No one!

There comes a time when one must triumph over pains of separation and move on.

My niece and I we have a bond maybe because she lives so far, but I love her so much that it makes me cry, it aches my heart to see her walk, I love all my nieces and all my nephews, but those who live far hurt more when I think of them and how limited our time together is. How my sisters can get over the cuteness of their little ones is beyond me, and may God protect them. How do they get anything done?

But again about the traveling, you disappear, you appear, and between earth and heaven you fly for hours.

Those who live abroad have left everything behind and they have blocked it out. If they don't they will drown in nostalgia, they have to be numb, they have to not think about it. They have to become insensitive or else the truth of how truly sensitive they are will not make them live.

What is real? what is not? What is forever? What does not change? where will we be? how will we be? will we disappear too? will we have to be numb too? How long will we stay? So many people we have managed without after we thought they were our oxygen, every day attachment becomes less appealing to me. But what do we do with our nature? Where do we go when we disappear? How come we turn out to be stronger than we thought? How come what we thought was the end of the world turned out to be not. It was the beginning. Why can't we all live together, with the people we love in peace, wearing our smiles, why does there always have to be heart ache? Why is there always something? When will we be in peace? and what do I do with the traumatizing fear of losing a loved one? All we can do is pray for ease, for mercy and for whatever it is that is coming our way to be easy, to be safe, that we can handle it on the day.

Where do we disappear, when we do, and how did they father and mother us when they had no answers, no guarantees, how do they walk solidly knowing that they are just lucky? And how do they sleep after what happened to them?

A Sick Cairo

The Egyptians have become hysterical when people sneeze around them. A phobia is spreading like fire, faster than the disease in the city of Cairo and all its suburbs. Well educated people are leaving there sneezing family members alone on their sick beds. They forgot about our culture and religion. According to Islam visiting the sick is like visiting God. Like every God sent religion visiting the sick is something not negotiable in the Islamic religion. Especially visiting a family member,

Now in Egypt a person sneezes and the words swine flu are rubbed in their faces, how insensitive is that? Everyone runs away like they were infected with a deadly disease. My husband's British friend told him he was infected with H1N1 and he stayed home for a week and got better. He said that his daughter was too, in a normal way he said it and he brought no drama. In Egypt the word pig is a very disgusting word in pronunciation and meaning. Although pigs are creatures of God, but they symbolize the nastiest of habits. Islamic teachings prohibits the eating of ham, but does not support abusing pigs.

Now the word swine flu in arabic sounds like the worst thing in the world, words in arabic can be very harsh and very demeaning. The name of the virus has been changed to H1N1 in the west out of their humanity. Here in Cairo I walk into a nail spa and the women tells me where were you I tell her I was in America, she says take care that you did not pick up the pig disease and in arabic it is pronounced influenza al khanzir! She says it sarcastically and in disrespect the way a bully in grade three would.
If someone sneezes instead of a God bless you, you get childish cruelty of people taking a step back and saying oh they have got the pig disease making you feel like a pig your self, while in fact they are the pigs!
The media is magnifying the disease here in Cairo like it is Armageddon, like a crazy old superstitious woman who saw a black cat and a broken mirror at once.

I wondered how the kids were teasing each other in schools, and worse how the teachers treated the sneezing child in a public school. This swine flu bullshit is a big lie! yes it is there, but it is exactly like the normal flu, in california it is not even a subject of conversation. The rate of mortality is lower than that of the normal flu. In London many people go to parties wanting to get infected so that they get over with it and move on.

People here are acting insanely, cruelly, selfishly and ignorantly. Fear of the disease has left sick family members sad and alone at home scared and feeling like a disgrace. This propaganda is all for more and more attention to the media, for vaccinations getting sold more, for medicines to profit, for newspapers to sell more, for people to panic and get distracted.

This stupidity and ignorance has to stop. The only thing we have here that is better than the west in Egypt is close family ties and compassion and the all for one, one for all collectivist culture, if you take that away too and turn into cruel selfish monsters, who desert their family members in fear of catching a stupid flu, then we are left with nothing here. Just an over crowded cruel crazy place that no sane person would want to be at.

People of Egypt remember that the sneezer deserves a God Bless you wish not a judgement and fear and selfish cruelty!

The disease is in your hearts and heads! you who abandon your sneezing loved ones!

The pigs are innocent, the pigs are those who act like pigs, have you ever seen a sneezing pig?

Have you ever seen a pig panic because his brother sneezed? Pigs are pink! at least pigs are pigs! Nobody expects more of them, but you who got the education, you with the heart that beats faster when in love, you who recites the book of God, you who knows good from bad, why are you acting like this?

Who are the pigs? Who are the victims? Who should run away from who? and who should be scared?

Next time someone sneezes, grow up, be brave, say the words, say them! God Bless the sneezer, who is my friend!!

The Lover

A house of God is a house of God, whether it is a church a mosque or a temple.

A sacred place is a sacred place for me and you and all the believers.

A priest is as wise as the sheikh as wise as the buddhist monk, all are as wise as the men of God!

In the church they speak of light

In the mosque they speak of mercy

In the temple they speak of enlightenment and in the end they speak of God.

All ways lead to him.

All lovers worship the one.

All the hearts of the faithful have his throne in it.

All the sincere smiles when his name is spoken, when the angels gather and the babies giggle at the ceilings, when the children laugh and the angels roam the place that speaks of God that is when the heart melts.

When people gather in love, when prophets are revered and silence fills the air, the heart melts.

The teary eye will drop it's tears when they speak of the loved one, when they come together in love, when in love all shields fall, all are one, when in love.

In ones skin yet the spirit expands and travels lands, in ones clothes but feeling the joy inside friends hearts, living life but also living the days of loved ones.

They said love is never jealous but my love is insanely jealous my love wants to be special.

The lovers are in remembrance, the lovers close their eyes and see your heavens.

The lovers know you are behind every beautiful eye, the lovers only prayer room is the heart.

The lovers only water is in the eye, the lovers heart is so breakable, the lover is the opposite of stone. The lover is never alone. The lover is terrified of your disapproval, the lover longs for a word about you, collapses with out you, has no pride when it comes to you, loves your creatures, loves the truth, stares at the sky, loves your moon.

The lover is always in pain when experiencing separation and is blissful in union, the lover is the one standing shy in the corner, the one raising their palms towards the sky, closing his eyes, and losing the I.

The lover is holding on. The lover wants peace and closeness and a glance of his glorious face.

The lover is dreaming of him and is always thirsty for more love and light.

My mother

In our Eastern culture family is everything, in many cases mothers give their lives to their children and women are expected to give with no hopes of return. Women in Egypt especially those who mothered my generation, it is not just a generalization, have given us everything they have to give on a platter and threw their own needs away a long time ago. I am talking about my mother who deserves a golden statue as high as mount everest and as golden as her heart. Of course every son or daughter thinks their own mother and father are amazing and are the best, but I think my mother is an angel among us. She lives to light our lives up, she gives like she is an ocean and her love is like the endless waves, always giving, always willing, she perseveres, she always forgives. She is the notion of Love. She is the embodiment of compassion, she is a big throbbing heart that fills her family's life with life and light. Without her we all collapse and I can not go on. Without her I wouldn't have learned to love praying and I would not have known about sufism. Without her the sky is grey and when she travels long the whole world stops for my family. She is not like the rest of us, she is like the roses of the spring time, she blossoms in the warmth, her every wish is to see her children happy. She gave everything up just to be with us. She never let me go astray or lose my way. When I was a kid she told me all the stories of the prophets and engraved my love for them and the angels. On fridays she always filled the house with scents and the sound of the call of prayer, every day she prays for each of her children. She becomes more beautiful with age, everyone wonders what she does and I know, it is the love she has for us and everyone that makes her glow. She always knew her priorities although she lost her own mom when she was nine. She could have been a famous actress or singer with all the flow of art and charisma she has, and her impeccable taste in clothes and fashion. She lives for God and us and my only wish is that she grows the selfish gene, thinks more of herself and what makes her happy, that she stays healthy and happy with us because she is our sunshine larger than life. God Bless her when she sneezes, God bless her when she sleeps, God bless her when she wakes up, God Bless her and her notebook that is marked with our important dates and everything we plan to do she makes sure is planned right. She is as sensitive as the the rose and as beautiful as a dream. She is always tidy and everything around her so clean. She can not stand bad gossip, she can not take injustice, she treats the help like they were her children, her maid is lucky from being around her she even looks more pretty. People love her, those who do not are sick in the head.

She glows like a diamond, she smiles like a star, her hug is safety and all I know is from her, God's greatest gift to me is her and that he chose to give me such a mother, we are nothing but reflections of our parents, she showed me divine light and since then I have been seeking more. We cry and laugh together, we love to eat together, I tell her detailed stories and she listens, she tells me what happened last week and I listened. The more I travel and come back to her I realize how amazing she is. Living with her I took her greatness for granted, I messed up my room in her house and that used to cause us problems. Little did I know about how she was right in everything she said and everything she did. I wish my mother would paint again, would have more fun doing things for her self and that her days do not pass in giving and giving all the time. She is an angel among us, my great father is a lucky man, everyone who meets her and shakes her hand is lucky, some people do not deserve her company and they do no know how lucky they are.

She sneezed a few sneezes and was tired like most human beings do she felt sick for a while, I hope she feels better , she already does.

God bless the woman who loves me and loved me and will always love me, Bod bless her when she sneezes God bless her when she walks this earth.

Who am I?

Just by watching people, you learn so much about them.

Just by being there you change them.

When you look closer sometimes their faces look uglier, other times they become more beautiful.

I learned that people from a distance all look the same. Friendly smiles many times betray, many times the sparkly eye is in reality dry, by time things become more clear.

I learned a lot about a people when I watched them.

Some live to make the lives of their loved ones happy, they light it up and make sure everyting flows.

Some live to control and direct and manipulate and eat you alive.

Some smile and talk to you nicely while you know for sure that they talk badly about you behind your back.

God gave me this gift it becomes like a tattoo on their foreheads, so obvious, saying I am not real.

Well I am not here to praise my self but atleast I am one faced, at least I am real, at least I do not pretend to be someone else!

I am just me, simply and easily, just me!!!

Here I am!!

I realized how much I still have to learn.

I know nothing at all.

I am in my cocoon and I fail to mingle.

I have been over protected and every time I reach the road to try to walk bear foot I crumble.

I pick my pieces up and I go back to stage one.

I am always afraid.

I always run away.

I am terrified of commitment to anything.

I like to fly away.

I keep forgetting how I am and I make plans and share my dreams and I get disappointed from human beings who are not so nice after all, so I run away again and start from scratch and again I forget that I am easily breakable and I wonder where do I belong if everything is disappointing?

The best time of my life is on the theatre or painting or dancing. How come I am so not practical? In my life I wonder if I can live most of it on stage and back stage. I wonder if I can paint my life away? People want to tie me down and I think I can be, but I can not.

I can not be tied down, open to betray, vulnerable to disappointments or even up for taking any kind of injustice.

Maybe I am different but that does not make me worse, thank God for who I am, it has been twenty four years living in my skin, with so many tears and smiles I have got by, I am getting used to my teary eyes, it is not a bad thing anymore, I wont fight it as long as my laugh comes so easily too, I am a package deal, with my laughs and tears and my wings that no one can cut or strip away from me except the one who gave them to me.

I am what I am and thank God for that.

Love and Marriage

The idea of loving what you see and who you see keeps getting stronger every day to me.

Celebrating my friend's pre wedding party I realized the more I watch her dance with her groom the more I love them. We love watching the people we love, we love being there for them. That is why people get so upset when they were not invited, it is like you are telling them, we do not want you watching, we fear your eye, or you are not close enough. In many cases it is true that the person not invited is not actually close to you, the problem is when they think they are. I think it is all about the visual, we are afraid of the evil eye in our culture and all we think about is who the people we do not want to see the things happening to us are, and suddenly instead of enjoying our event or the happy thing happening to us we become terrified of the person we fear their eye. We fear them so much and we do not want them to know, they were not invited so we keep fearing them and their reaction until our happiness is forgotten and they end up becoming all we think of.

When we are invited we feel trusted and close enough to be there, we love that feeling and the less people there the more special we feel because we were selected. As a guest you feel vulnerable and you feel like your name was on a list and then maybe it was scribbled on and then maybe it came back to the list. You never know what happened in the selective process but you end up really enjoying going there when you care about the bride and groom. The more you see them, the happier you are for them, the more they dance, the more joyful you become, the lazy brides and grooms kill the joy of the guests.

At the party last night we realized the less people have, the more they can find joy. They prepared a surprise wedding before the official wedding and the surprise wedding was surprisingly super fun. It was a wedding that any low income Egyptian family can provide, and it tasted as powerful as our authentic Egyptian food in Egypt. The vibrant colored lights, the insane music and the beer on the tables, every thing was purely Egyptian to the core. Everyone was welcome to come since we all pitched in, but we found out the night before and that kept some guests from going. The thing is it was all planned a night before. It was spontaneous, it was splashing with joy, it was a night I will never forget. It was not over crowded, it was not planned for a long time ago, it was not pretentious, no body there came by social force or out of fear of guilt. We all dressed up like the simplest Egyptian would and it was the most fun ever!

We felt the joy of the masses that we are segregated from, the people of Egypt are mostly those who get married the way we partied last night, they dance until they drop! they sing and they do not stop, in comfortable insane colors they dress, they over accessorize, the girls in red lipstick, the guys in golden chains, and red is the king of colors and the decorations are so tasty. The music is so powerful and with sticks they dance the night away!!

I realized that joy costs nothing and the more we complicate the less fun we have. I realized that in costumes people lose a fear of their own skin and identity and they party like crazy, I realized that the happiest times are those that cost the least. I realized that all people need is music and freedom and no fear of judgement. I realized that in our Egyptian culture and drums is the power of the Brazilian drum, and the passion we have as young Egyptians is just as powerful as the Brazilian will to dance.

I missed my high school friends so much when I took up the grown up role, it was so much fun partying like it was prom night. It was like a carnival, festive, colorful, fun and so joyful. We were all so happy for them, I started remembering how the bride was in school and I got flashbacks of how much fun we used to have. Weddings in Egypt are so sentimental, we start having motherly feelings to the bride and groom and close friends are so happy for you like they were your grandparents. Every bride in Egypt lives like a princess for her week of fame, with every single tradition and the days of showers of love and presents. She becomes the center of so many dancing circles and all the guests fall in love with her, grooms are expected to worship the beauty of their brides and dance in joy. The wedding is all about the bride's dress in our cultures and the family of the brides almost light their fingers up with flames to brighten her last days up.

Marriage is a journey that is not blissful all along. Nothing is as joyful as the wedding day, the rest is no fairy tale, it is sharing life with its happy days and its sad. There should be some kind of catalogue telling happy brides that it is not all kisses and dances, it involves a lot of work too. No body tells the smiling bride about the laundry and all the bills they will have to pay. No body tells the future mothers about the sleepless nights and the disappearing "I" in her. Nobody tells her that for a while she will be someone's food literally!

Nobody tells her that it gets better with time, it takes getting used to, moving out and starting a new page. Nobody tells her that love is great but change is stressful. Nobody tells her that if she does not pick up the clothes from the floor they will fail to rise and hang them selves alone. Nobody tells her that cooking is not always a fun chore. Nobody tells her that the help will be as important as family or else she will become the help but for free. No body warns her but thats the way it should be so her jumps of joy on the wedding night are not half jumps.

Still in the wedding ceremony the priest or Sheikh should mention the fact that marriage is a journey with responsibility and that is not all about the freedom we thought it would be, it is about compromise, sharing and learning the catalogue of how a person you chose to share your life with, functions.

In sharing a life you learn to share someone's fears, joys, and eyes. You become phsycic anticipating patterns of behavior and so do they. They become heroes putting up with your imperfections and so do you. A kind heart is what every girl should seek or else knives could be thrown and homicide becomes an option. Compassion and saintly qualities is what couples need and living out of cairo too, since life in Cairo is not meant for married couples, it is custom made to destroy marriages. With the lack of privacy that couples experience and all the pressures from society and the expectations of every girl becoming a super house wife. With all the stress of living in this city that glorifies men and patronizes women, with all the options that unqualified religious advisors give men, it is only natural that the divorce rate is 60 percent.

Couples face the world together with all the monsters it may bring, if they can not find comfort in each other, life becomes extra hard, since they will be fighting the monsters at home too. Married couples take a vow in the west, for better or for worse till death do us part. However in the East like my experience the government official who married us whispered in my groom's ear telling him next time he gets married he should call him. It was not romantic take it from me!

Marriage means promising someone that it is you and them against the world not you against them while the world throws down it's monsters. Marriage is a promise of loyalty and support, telling someone you are on his or her team and they will always come first. Marriage is a show of love and a heavenly bond that is no joke, it is a full time job. Disney's cartoons fooled us, there is no happily ever after, it is more of a happy and sad, together, through a journey, hopefully, (fingers crossed)!