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?
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